Song of Ireland

Chapter One My father was ever a wanderer. Even in my earliest, unformed memories of him, he is always standing on some parapet or framed in the embrasure of a tower of Egypt. Even now, I see his cloak blowing back in the wind, his gaze fixed west and north, the long thickness of his chestnut mane twisting against the bunched cloak as he pondered the distance. I can hear the dry rattle of the palm fronds and feel the constant friction of the wind-borne sand of Egypt, gritty against my skin. Though I was my father's fifth son of two wives, with more still to brood in my mother's womb cradle, it was with me that he shared his vision of a magical journey. He would hold me up to the window, close his eyes to the breeze. "Inisfail," he would say. "The Isle of Destiny. I smell her on the breeze, lad. I see her in my dreams." "How do you know of her?" "She is in the legends of my people. The people of Galicia. Inisfail, the Isle where dwell the Magic People. They say that he who finds her will be gifted with their magic. But in all my wanderings, I have never found her." Usually, his dreams of Inisfail were the sure sign that soon we would be wandering again, so that by the time I reached my fifteenth year, I had been already to Rhatokis on our north coast, to the Greek democracy more than once, and even to the newly minted republic of Rome, though my father was not of any of those countries. My father had begun his life as Golamh, son of Bile, the great chief of the Galaeci. Our tribe dwelled in the town of Brigantia in the far west of Spain, in the region called Galicia for the people of our tribe. My father had described it to me as a soft and rainy country, itself green. I must admit that when the sands of Egypt blew against the sky, I often longed for Galicia, though perhaps it was only my father's love of the place and my worshipful love of him. The tales said that our people had wandered there to the edge of the sea centuries before. Perhaps our ancestors too were searching for the Isle of Destiny, but knew not how to find it when they reached the edge of the water. For them, my grandfather, Breogam, had built the tall, slender broch that stood by the sea and placed into it the Eternal Flame. My father referred to it always as Breogam's Light Tower. Though my father had grown up in Galicia, even my elder brothers had never seen the place at all, though truly we had all caught the wandering disease. For my older brothers Eber Finn and Eremon, it took the form of land longing. "When I have my own parcel," Eber Finn would say, and Eremon would chime in, "I will fill it with grazing cattle as far as the eye can see." For my eldest brother, Eber Donn, the sickness took the form of acquisition. What he needed or what he wanted he took, be it women or wine, land or weapons. To be truthful, women seemed to sense the hunger in him and rushed to fill it. By the time I had a mere eight years, he was possessed of three handsome wives whom he pleasured together and separately, much to the envious jesting of Eber Finn and Eremon, who possessed only one wife each. Eber Donn was the son of my father's first wife, the long departed Seang, daughter of the king of Scythia. There my father had first taken service when he was a young man. So powerful a soldier was he, so vital to the king, that he became known as Mile Easpain, Soldier of Spain, and he captained the armies of that country. But when Seang died in the birthing of my second brother, Airioch Feabhruadh, the king of Scythia was racked with grief and took against my father for the womb-death of his daughter. My father fled to EgyptOsborne-McKnight, Juilene is the author of 'Song of Ireland ' with ISBN 9780765312433 and ISBN 0765312433.