The Celtic Riddle

Anyway, one day the Dagda went to the camp of the Fomorians to ask for a truce, and also, for he was a crafty one, to spy on their camp. The Fomorians, some of them giants themselves, prepared for him a porridge of eighty gallons of milk, another eighty of meal and fat. Into this they put pigs and goats and sheep, then poured it all into an enormous hole in the ground.

"Eat all of it, " the Fomorians said, "or die."

"I will then," the Dagda replied, and taking his ladle, so big a man and a woman could lie down in its bowl together, he started to eat. As the Fomorians watched, he swallowed every last bit of it, scraping up the crumbs in the dirt with his massive hand where the ladle couldn't reach, then lay himself down to sleep.

"Look at his belly," the Fomorians cried, pointing at the sleeping Dagda, his gut rising like a mountain from where he lay. "He'll not be getting up from here."

And what do you think happened then? The Dagda awoke, grunted, hefted his huge bulk up and staggered away, his club dragging behind him, cutting a furrow the width of a boundary ditch. Even then he was not spent, for later that day, he lay with the Morrigan, the Crow, goddess of war. But anyway, that's another story.

I was there then, you know. Yes, I was. Who's to say that I wasn't?

Chapter One. I AM THE SEA-SWELL

ONE of the very few advantages of being dead, I've discovered, is that you can say whatever you like. Freed from the burden of exquisite politeness, you can utter whatever painful truths, cruel jibes, gut-wrenching confessions, and acid parting shots you wish, without having to endure the drama, endless protestations, embarrassment, or threats of retaliation such candor inevitably elicits.

Eamon Byrne thought as much, I suppose, but in saying what he did, he unleashed a howl of rage and bitterness so intense, perhaps not even he could have imagined its consequences. Certainly, when I heard him speak from the grave, I thought him merely churlish and insensitive, although not altogether mistaken. But that was before I had more than a passing acquaintance with the people of whom he spoke.

"I suppose you're wondering why I called you all together," Byrne began, a smirk on his face that turned into a grimace, then a gasp.

"Eamon always did like to be the center of attention," Alex Stewart whispered to me, leaning close to my ear so the others wouldn't hear.

"Eamon also had a way with a cliche, apparently,' I whispered back.

"Particularly," the man went on after a few seconds of labored breathing, "particularly," he repeated, "seeing as how I'm dead."

"Bit of a comedian too," Alex added with a sigh.

The face on the videotape leaned toward the camera, blurred, then lurched back into focus, the camera adjusted by some invisible hand. It was not an easy face to look at, sunken cheeks and eyes, an oxygen tube extending from one nostril, gray hair plastered to his head, but I could see the shadow of a proud and once handsome man.

"I'm amazed he'd allow himself to be videotaped in this state," I whispered to Alex.

Alex inclined his head toward me again. "I never had the impression he much cared what people thought, Lara. Quite the contrary, as a matter of fact." As he spoke, a foot-long tortoise inched its way across the oriental carpet.

"Shhhh," the pinched-faced woman in the row in front of us hissed over her shoulder. Two other like-faced women in the same row turned at the first's admonition to glare at us, mother and daughters, like three peas in a pod, the family resemblance that pronounced. I resisted the temptation of saying something unkind, and contented myself with glaring back and thinking uncharitable thoughts.