NEW Anam Cara

by Roisin Fraser

PG, TOS,

K/S (implied)

Disclaimer: ParaBorg owns them, not the creative content of this story. And I doubt they'd want it anyway, but...Okay to post at ASC or archive, all others, please ask.

Thanks to Islaofhope and PernFancy, for beta-ing beyond the call...and for not laughing themselves silly at the premise. :O)

This story isn't a part of either the T'Rela Series or the Intermission Series, but if you want to read the rest of my stories, I won't stop you. They're at www.geocities.com/Area51/Starship/2151

Author's note: This story got started one afternoon when I was reading the following passage from an 8th century Irish legend called the Táin Bó Cuailnge, or The Cattle Raid of Cooley: "There was no wiser being in the world. He never gave a judgement until it was ripe, for fear it might be wrong and the crops worsen. There was no hardier warrior in the world...heroes and battle-veterans and brave champions went before him into every fight and fray to keep him from harm." Now, the man in the story is the legendary Conchobor, but because I read (and write) way too much Star Trek, I thought, "Hey, this sounds like Jim Kirk." And so this story was written, with my apologies to Thomas Kinsella's excellent translation of the Táin.

Irish common nouns are taken from Lighthouse's Irish-English/English- Irish Dictionary. All errors, of course, are mine. The concept of anam cara, or soul friend, is real. I did not make this up.

Feedback: PLEASE!!! Constructive comments welcome, flames will be sent to the circular file.

Rating: TOS, PG, K/S

Summary: "Anam Cara" is Irish for "Soul-friend." This is a story about what can bind two friends together in the face of a capricious universe.


Anam Cara
by Roisin Fraser

The bard shifts uneasily, staring into the fire. The night has grown darker, the fog creeping unceasing, and the bard knows they will demand a story. She shifts her arisaid closer around her thin shoulders, and looks into the eyes around the circle. Green eyes, brown eyes, blue eyes, but none of the hazel that so haunted her once, long years before. Nor are there eyes of the deepest brown she saw when youth was a reality instead of a fading memory.

But she remembers all, this bard. It is the way of her people, for one with the arts to be trained to be the Rememberer. And so, she remembered when Conal's woman sought a child from Aoife's brother that Conal might have a child from their barren marriage. And she remembered when that child was born, how the sunlight flashed off the red hair and they named the girl Aodhamair, the fiery one. The child Aodhamair sits now at the bard's feet, and the bard smiles in return. The fiery one would serve as bard in her time, for the bard knew that time's cold press crushed them all eventually.

Aodhamair glances at the bard. "Scéal?" Story?

The bard nods, and the faces around the campfire smooth with relief. "I will tell you how it was for me long years ago, when I was not a bard but just a daughter and a bard in training."

The group around the fire settles more firmly into the earth. Though the food was lacking, the story would fill them. "We'll have a ceildh," another child murmured. By the voice the bard knows it for Conal's nephew Liam. The bard smiles at the child; it will not be a complete ceildh, for there is too much hunger to play the music, but at least the story can be heard.

The bard brushes back long silver hair that had once been the red of Aodhamair's. "The story I give you is all the truth I know."

***

It is well for me to say that I am my mother's daughter, though not entirely my father's. My mother was a gifted one with the stories; a shanachie, the old ones said, and had met my father during a ceildh. My father was, and is, something of a wanderer, picking up stray ideas and stray people as easily as everyone else picks up a woven basket for market. I can scarce remember a time when Father did not bring home stray people. All but the soldiers, for he would not take in the warriors of England, they who sought to subdue us. So we made do with poets and monks, musicians and weavers.

There were four of us in the croft on the day my father returned with the news that was the beginning of the story which was to haunt me for the rest of my days, the one story I never considered telling. My mother Mairead, my sister Sorcha, myself, and my grandmother Siobhan, who was a noted wise woman. Sorcha was weaving, and my mother was making me repeat the story of Cuchulainn as she had heard it from her mother. This was the training of the bard, and although I was no longer a child, I was still a long way off from being a bard as she was. Before I could recount the exploits of Cuchulainn, there was a clatter on the dirt outside the croft. My father, making his customary entrance. As he murmured his greetings to us, his gaze blue-eyed like my own, fastened upon my mother. "Mairead," he said, "there's a problem in the village."

My mother raised her eyebrows at him. "Oh?"

"The changeling has fallen ill."

Sorcha dropped her shuttle. The tale of Cuchulainn's exploits faded unspoken from my mother's lips. It is difficult for me to express how that single statement could affect all of us the same way. We knew of the changeling, for though we might not see those of the village for months at a time, rumor still traveled faster than the tide. He was, put as succinctly as I can, not like the rest of us. His mother had been one of us; she had shared a croft with one of the fisherman's families. But when she fell pregnant and delivered a boy, the rumor began that her child was actually a faerie child, that her own had died and had been replaced by the faeries.

Now, the old ways are obvious about what to do in such circumstances: Eithne should have returned the changeling child to the hill, and given it back to the faeries. My grandmother, being a wise woman, had offered to do the deed herself. But Eithne had not, and although she had died some years before, her son, now grown to adulthood, had all the mark of the faerie upon him.

Oh, he was not without favor. He was tall, and dark, as some in his family have been for generations. But the ears were those of the faries': curved and pointed at the tips. And as if this were not enough to set him apart from the rest of us, he had gashed his knee once mending a net, and had bled green. My grandmother, Siobhan, had seen it, and had repaired the tear in his skin. Ever since, the changeling had been our ally. Before we knew that our nets were in ill-repair, the nets were mended or replaced. The knives we used to take the bones out of the fish were sharpened before we were aware they had grown dull.

If there was one saving grace for the changeling, one ability that allowed him to live in an uneasy truce with the villagers and with those in the crofts, it was that remarkable ability to fix anything that was ever broken or in need of mending. Certainly Padraig could have mended the nets, but not as quickly. Alein could have cleaned the fishing baskets of their inevitable debris, but not with the changeling's incredible speed. The changeling worked wood as the seals swim in the sea---without apparent effort. So it was to him that the farmers came when their tools broke, and the weavers came when their looms cracked. They came, and left, quickly, leaving the changeling alone again.

So the changeling lived, if one could call it that, on the uneasy border between two worlds. He spoke rarely to adults, aware that he lived on their sufferance, knowing that if they decided to chase him from his small house, there would be none to gainsay it. He kept to himself as a form of self-defense. No warrior he, though he did not lack courage, the changeling lived most of his life trying not to attract attention anymore than he already did.

The changeling had spoken to me once, and that began our uneasy friendship. I had been returning from dyeing wool---smelly business, that---and had taken a moment to wash the smell off my hands in the stream when I sensed his presence beyond me. I know now that I was not the first to find him attractive, with his dark eyes and calm ways, so different from the bluster of many men. But those ears were enough to remind us, if we harbored any notions of loving him openly, of his essential difference.

His first words were a greeting. "Dia dhuit. You are Saoirse, granddaughter of Siobhan the wise woman?"

I almost did not answer. His voice was rough but not unattractive for all that. I blushed, remembering that I did not know his name, though he was but a few years older than me. I picked up the basket which held the day's cloth. "Dia is Muire dhuit. I am. And you are?"

He hesitated, those finely drawn eyebrows lurking down. "Spock."

I brushed the hair out of my eyes. That was one of the rumors, that his father had come from the Norsemen. No one really knew who his father was, but it was not a matter of concern so much as curiosity. Ah, well, if he was part Norse---hardly uncommon in Eire---that did explain the name. But one more difference must surely be a burden.

The basket shifted on my hip---it was heavy, and I had begun carrying the full load of women only a few months earlier. Without warning, it began to fall. Before I even had time to consider what my mother might say to the sight of the freshly dyed cloth soaked in mud, Spock caught the basket. His hand brushed against mine, and I was startled at how warm it was. Standing out here, with the cool breeze blowing off the ocean, he should have been at least slightly chilled. But he was not.

I remembered that meeting when my father came with the news that the changeling had fallen ill. "Who discovered him?" my grandmother demanded.

My father hesitated. "Seumas O'Cuire."

Grandmother Siobhan huffed slightly, a sound we all recognized as boding ill for the recipient. "That one! Comes back from the English no wiser than when he left us, I'll warrant. What does he know?"

I had to admit she might have a point. Seumas was, like my father, a wanderer born, but unlike my father, Seumas had not stayed around long enough to be woven into either village or croft life. His father died when he was young, and his mother, quite worn out with trying to raise and feed four active sons, had had little time to spare for her youngest. When he left, following the English soldiers as they pushed further into Eire, there was the usual amount of disgruntlement, but no real surprise. Seumas had longed for adventure past the green hills of Eire for as long as any had known him; the English were but a means to that end. He had, I heard some months later, taken work with them as a blacksmith. But now Seumas had returned, in time to discover that Spock the Changeling was ill.

Grandmother huffed again, this time while packing her small store of herbs and potions. "Well, there is need. I will go to the changeling. Saoirse, I need you to come."

My mother Mairead stared hard at her. "Do you think that's wise? What if it's the plague?"

Grandmother shook her head slightly. "Whatever ails him, I doubt it's the plague." She gathered up a few of her baskets while I took the rest in hand.

It was not a long walk to the changeling's cottage. Even though it was spaced deliberately far from the village, it was closer to the crofts. One light shove of the wood door, and we were inside. Seumas stood there, gazing at Spock as he slept restlessly on the rude pallet. "Dia dhuit, Seumas," I said, trying not to stare at how much he had changed. He had not been fully grown when he ran away to the English invaders, but now he was full grown, and strong. Hazel eyes gazed at me under a shock of thick blond hair.

"Dia is Mhuire dhuit, Saoirse. It's James now. James Kirk." I nodded, thinking that if the English were arrogant enough to change a man's name to suit them, what must that make he who had allowed it? Apparently he caught the thought. "They could not pronounce the name my father gave me, and it was easier..." I shook my head then; I could never think this man traitor, not the Seumas I knew, who had crafted stories for me out of the thin patch of fog of what he would be and where he would go. This one always knew his worth, and if the English were fool enough to think that changing a man's name changed his people as well, that was their own blindness Grandmother's words broke into my thoughts . "How long has he been like this?"

I thought back. I had seen him at the village well only a few days ago. He had appeared distracted, but not ill. Seumas---James----said, "I came to have my scabbard replaced. He was shaking so, muttering words I did not understand" At once I knew his words for pretense; aye, he had come upon Spock in his illness, but his scabbard did not need replacing. And even if it did, he would not have changed his metal one for the wood one that Spock could make.

It was at times like these that the wise-woman, she who knew and understood the uses of roots and herbs and spells, came to the forefront. "Have you gone lack-witted, Seumas? He has a high fever." Remembering the touch of his hand on mine, I wondered how my grandmother could tell, but I did not care to dispute her.

Nor, apparently, did James. "I was not sure. He was always warm, even when we played together as children."

I remembered that too, how the croft and the village children had played together, until the adults pulled them away from the changeling. Seumas and Spock had been friends, and Seumas his only protector in the village. Even then, Spock had been nameless: he was "the changeling," or the éan corr, "the outsider." But Seumas had called him friend, and that had been name enough for him. When Seumas left to seek his wanderings among the English, Spock had withdrawn almost completely, seeing to his repairs and tasks in silence.

Siobhan looked up from where she was making one of her tonics. "Hand me that cup over there, will you?" I reached for it, but alas, I was shorter than the shelf. James reached up to hand it to me. "Why did you return?" I asked him pointedly. "Your scabbard has never looked better."

He bent towards me as if to get a better grip on the mug. "I came to ask him to leave this place and come with me," he answered for my ears alone. "I did not think it was necessary to tell all and sundry."

"I have heard nothing," I said, squeezing his arm in the simple friendship we had known as children. I handed the cup to my mother. "Will he die, Grandmother?" I asked. For all I could tell, he was scarcely breathing. The changeling had been my friend, albeit from a distance. I began to realize how much I might miss this gentle soul if he were gone from my life.

She smiled then, sadly, as she helped the changeling to drink one of her tonics. "He seeks his own kind, Saoirse, his anam cara." I wanted him to speak, so that I would know he would be all right. But Siobhan caught the thought even as I wished it. "He will not speak until this is over."

"What are his own kind?" I asked, certain she would tell me something about faery folk, or Norsemen.

But she did not tell me what I wanted to know. "That's a truth I may share with you when you are older, and bound by the bard's oath to tell only what can be revealed. For now, I cannot speak of it. It was a promise I made to his mother."

She brushed a hand against the damp forehead. "Drink, this was what your mother gave me." There was no response from the still figure on the bed, but he did drink.

I met James' eyes and he shook his head slightly. He had known Eithne better than I, but even he did not know what my grandmother meant. "Siobhan, did Spock's mother know of this fever?"

Grandmother nodded. "She knew that they would come according to their own cycle." She rose. "I have done all that can be done. Seu---James, will you stay with him?"

There was much I did not know about the man James had become. "I'll stay with him," I said.

The look she gave me was one I had never seen. "No, it is not fitting that you should, Saoirse. I speak as a bean feasa, you cannot do this."

One argues with a wise woman at one's peril. I nodded, and we stepped outside. When we were out of earshot, I asked, "Why did you not stay with him, Grandmother?"

"Because it is not fitting that I should either. Spock seeks his anam cara, he will find it in James." Siobhan met my eyes then, every inch the wise woman she had long been recognized to be. "They will be all right, Saoirse. I have seen it, and know it for truth."

I was to question, many years later, how my grandmother had seen so clearly that each man was what the other needed. James, for all his faults, was loyal to those he called friend, and his peculiar rootlessness had driven him home to find Spock. And as for Spock, there could never be any home for him, except that which was granted by sufferance. Yet in James' eyes, Spock was equal to him. So although neither had a home, they had found a home with each other.

I did not dispute her knowing. I knew that when we returned to the croft, she would be my grandmother again, the woman who made soups and poultices. She would not be the woman whose green-eyed gaze held knowledge I realized I could never share. Siobhan had sworn a vow to a dying woman to look after her son, and I could ask no further.

***

The changeling Spock did recover, but he did not remain long among us. I saw he and James together once before they left and I knew that they had found in each other what was lacking: a home, a friend, and the bond between them stretched tight, to be severed only at death and perhaps not then. Truly, they were anam cara.

James told me before they left that he would not be rejoining the English army. "My wanderings take me elsewhere," he said, smiling at Spock, who looked at him with a light I had never seen before in his eyes.

I might have wondered how James planned on evading the English; surely, if he had served with the English, even as a blacksmith, they would now be looking for him. I might have wondered, but I didn't. Seumas O'Cuire's cleverness and intuition had existed long before James Kirk, and now he had Spock on his side, Spock who could fix anything. The English didn't stand a chance.

Siobhan lived another year after they left. With her, died all my hopes of understanding who Spock had actually been. With her too, it seemed, died the memories of the changeling. The quiet, still figure who had lived in tense harmony among us was forgotten. No doubt, he would have wished it that way.

I married, raised children of my own. But the press of English ways was much more apparent than it was in my youth; my daughters did not want to spend hours memorizing the stories of Medb and Conchobor and Cuchulainn. My son Liam showed some promise of being a healer as his great-grandmother was, but he can never be wise in the ways she was. He did not have the Sight, her peculiar gift for seeing what was invisible to everyone else. Perhaps that is as well.

I have not spoken of them now for well on thirty years. I swore the bard's oath before my mother's death, the oath to repeat accurately what I have seen. But to speak of this story, to speak of the bond of anam cara as I witnessed it, seemed to lessen the event. And so, I have remained silent. It was little enough that I could do for them.

And then, four days ago, I heard word that James and Spock had been killed. The manner of their death is unknown to me, but James' brother Ciaran saw the bodies. I am told they will be buried together. That I tell their story now is the only memorial I can make to them.

***

The bard draws her arisaid in closer. There is a soft start among the faces; the story has ended and they ignore the knowing, wanting that there should be something more.

But there is no more; the bard has spoken all she knows, or is likely to know, about James Kirk and Spock. They wait for her words to seal the story. "The words I have spoken are truth," she says. "It is I, Saoirse McCoy, who says this."


The End.