Waves in the Wind by Wade McMahan Page A

and beauty inside your heart. Perhaps the gods long ago destined they should meet and thereafter float within the world of butterflies side by side.
    A dimly seen movement caught my attention. It was Aine flitting like an unswerving arrow towards our home. I rose and greeted her with a “Good morning,” but she ignored me as she walked through the door and slammed it behind her.
    Laoidheach groaned. “I told you.”
    * * *
    Sparks swirled, darted and joined with the smoke rising above the fire blazing before the stone altar. It was here within the Sacred Grove, as a youth, I spent countless days with my father. This night it served my purposes as an open-air temple.
    Four days had passed since my arrival at Rath Raithleann, during which time I had neglected my responsibilities toward my dead friends. My eyes closed as I stood before the fire; arms spread wide, palms upward, I intoned a prayer for the dead of Dún Ailinne.
    Within the still darkness,
    Spirits of the lost,
    Begging release,
    Seeking the eternal.
    O Aed, Lord of the Underworld,
    Souls of Dún Ailinne,
    Send them on their way,
    Free them for all time.
    By your gracious will,
    Paradise awaits them,
    Upon a distant shore,
    Beyond the western sea.
    My prayer was just begun, though I intended it for others with no thought of becoming a part of it myself. The fire’s smoke dissipated and the salty aroma of the sea filled my nostrils. I staggered to regain my balance as the ground beneath me shifted and sloped down to my right. Pitch-blackness prevailed while, again to my right, was the sound of waves washing upon an unknown shore.
    It was a place I knew, a place told of in old stories, a place undefined by ‘where,’ but rather by ‘when;’ it was a place of waiting, a place of the dead. How or why I arrived there I could not imagine.
    A shuddering moan broke the stillness and an ethereal green image shimmered before me only to whisk away and disappear into the distance. Spine-tingling shrieks, one atop the other, filled the air while I sensed more than saw spirit creatures churning within the darkness; indefinite forms not human, but which at one time might have been human. I cringed at the sights and sounds of those terrible dead things and trembled as unseen wings fluttered and swished overhead.
    The ghastly essence within the distressful, lonely setting caused me to consider that perhaps I was merely the dupe of my own fantastic dream. I slapped my face hard, once—twice, but no. Conceivably I stood amid the reality of an implausible unreality, but it was no dream.
    The haunting, dreadful sounds and motion ceased as unseen cymbals crashed, the reverberation emanating from I knew not where! Then ensued the deep throbbing of a drum—a double beat like the pounding of a man’s heart, thrum-thrum, thrum-thrum…
    My eyes were temporarily blinded as two torches flared on the beach a mere five paces before me. Now I could see that a single-masted ship lay there nosed against the sand, sail furled, a gangplank extended to the shore. Two more torches blazed and then two more, two more, and on and on to form opposing parallel lines that ended atop a high dune on my left. It was a flame-lit corridor—but for who, or what?
    The drumming continued and the head and shoulders of a hooded form appeared within the corridor above the top of the dune. The robed figure crested the rise and came on, proceeding down the corridor while behind it another individual arose, followed by another, and then another. A seemingly endless, single-file line of robed men marched in lock-step down the slope toward the ship, their paces keeping cadence with the sound of the drum; thrum-thrum, thrum-thrum, step-step, step-step…
    I knew them, although how I knew I cannot say—the ghosts of the dead of Dún Ailinne. White spirit faces frozen like those of granite statues were framed within the hoods of their robes. It was with relief and gladness that I could not recognize the stone-like