This Old Form

MacKenna took a step forward.  He had adopted a rather shabby gait in his time with the Kindred Eye.  He straightened himself.  Now he imagined he was back at the dig with his peers issuing intelligent statements about what they had just unearthed.

 

            What news?

            Your fellow sinners approach.   

 

The voice was like a hundred whispers happening at once in the ear. 

 

            Fellow sinners? 

            They seek a cure.  As you do, yes. 

            He must mean a cure for dying, MacKenna.  But I swear if this is the longevity Elder had in mind for us, I’ll be having none of it, thank you.

            You think we’re sinners.  I don’t believe in sin or any of that eternal rubbish.  Try and err, try and err. 

            How would he know about our sins?  He’s only been out of the ground a minute.

            Don’t admit to anything now, MacKenna.

            How nice to see the celestials again.  Spreading out bright and endless.  A million loving energies.  Mothers and fathers and sons and daughters.   

            You spoke in the goedelic previously. 

            You do not realise that even on my last terrestrial amble, I had heard more voices than ever you could in this life, and hear more now I do, infinite mouth-sound.  I was trained in all the languages of the world before the mob came, and in the deep blackness came to know many more, from Coptic dialects to the most splendorous achievements in plain gibberish.

            I do wish I could speak a foreign language.  Fluent Irish number one, of course. 

           So you don’t belong to the fairy folk?  Or are in cahoots with them?

           Your abrasive peasant friend was right.  You are given to shilly-shally and rhapsody.  Seeing fancy utopias, you have come to fancy immortality with death all the while before you in the lights.  It is not immortal life you crave in point of fact.  It is your youth you are after.  Yes, I have watched you.  You would have the life of a child forever.  Lolling at dawn, no conception of the end, singing hushos and prayers the day long.  Babes that require but a kiss on the soft scalp.  When favourability is the ultimate prize, the self eats its own heart, and does not respond to the hail of salvation.  

            Spoken like a right wing pundit on the breakfast shows.  Why did you come back to us if you’re no more than an old sniveler?

            One did not come back, one was pulled, compelled.  And in the giddy moment this old form was elevated, I truly believed I was free.  Soon it was clear this was not the case, that it is not too easy to part the soul and the body.  But in my exuberance upon release, I was eager to avenge my killing.  The wounds as you can see are multifold.  And to be clear they are still felt.  This body is once more in pain.  My old cuts.  In these minutes, I sense they have become gills like those on a fish for they call out for the moss again for to absorb its nutrients.   I know not what further agony is in store if this body is not returned to there.  I shall make peace yet again with my lot and return to the deep if you don’t mind.  Lamentable as it is, at the very least I will be near those who are like me, those who also swim silently in the darkness.

            What a pontifical fellow.  He is like Elder only deader.       

            I have never before been this intimate with a project, so close as to be able to have discourse.  I hope you wouldn’t mind answering some of my questions.

            If you must...but what would you ask me?

            Hurry up, MacKenna, will you, and ask him.  We can’t wait the whole century.  Or maybe some of us can... 

            It’s not long until the end of the century.  We might all get there.

            Those of us who keep to a certain diet may well see it.

            What would be present to mind?

            Presently, I wonder about the hereafter.

            And thus here it is.  After much speculation.  Though it is not as pleasant as your spirit guides would prescribe.  I too was once a spiritual leader.  There were about two hundred and fifty one things I was wrong about.  That is from about three hundred and twenty prescriptions I put forth in my tenure, so I was correct some of the time.  I can inform you that beneath us many still swim.

            So there’s something there, is there?

            Yes.  In the lights we are there.  But we are not free.  This watery place has us shackled and woefully preserved.  Put to rest here you are cursed.   

            How to lift the curse?

            You cannot. 

            You should speak to Elder.  He has many books on these topics.

            It cannot be lifted.  I know now we are incarcerated forever with our sins and I cannot atone for my own.  There is no-one left to forgive me.  No-one who might aid in the laundering of my name.

            Forgive you for what?  You haven’t roughed any of us up yet?  Apart from poor Sullivan.  And Brennan.  And the farmer too, wait a minute, you’ve had your way this night, so you have.

            I regret my dealings with my endmost sire.  I was tasked to be a mentor.  But I abused my station.  Took advantage of young flesh.  I also regret my dealings with the peasants of the land who I might have been kinder to.  Many fell victim to my sorcerous banter and pokery. 

            I can see why your name might have the old spleens going but that’s a long time ago now.  What is your name, by the way?

            Mur...hmm...Mur...  M...Mor...Ma.....  I cannot seem to remember.  I applied a turn of phrase, unskilfully, you see.

            Murmamorma?      

            As you please.

            Ah, come on, there must be some redemption out there for you.  Even our doubting tom of a humanist here has some forgiveness in his heart, for hasn’t he been forgiven many times, to little or no general benefit. 

           As before, there is no-one left to forgive.  There is nobody to discuss this calmly with.  Fight as I do for my freedom, I do so to no avail.

            Ah, a freedom fighter.  You’re a true Irishman so.  Right to the end and thereafter.  Is this why you’ve returned?  To go up the north and sort everything out for us. 

            Shush, humanist!  You must know we are humbled greatly to be the ones fortunate to have discovered you.  You are our progenitor.  And limb by limb here you are intact, rescued by the miracle-sphagnum.  I have yet to examine you properly but during which period was it you were alive and well?

            A bad period. 

            But on the calendar...? 

            Which calendar would that be?

            The Celtic one.

            I cannot say.  I recall it was a year of drought with fire, kings with tempers, corruption with comeuppance, villages with plague, and of course, heavy taxes.  And thunderstorms.  By the Gods, did we have them.  All the year was the dark half.  A dark whole.