The two sat upon the top of the hill beneath a great spreading oak and looked out across the plain.  The boy and his grandfather shared a bit of flat bread, a bit of cheese and some water from a water skin.  There were birds on the wing, water fowl, a hawk, song birds as well.  The old man enjoyed the quiet for a few moments, but his grandson could not let the moment last.

“Grandfather, what is the Dagda?” Bres asked.

“Not what, but who,” began Dream-Walker, “the Dagda was a giant who lived among the Deer-Riders.  Long ago, before the Gobli ravaged the plain, before we all took to horse, and even before the Deer-Riders rode their herd deer. 

“In fact it was not so much after the first men came down and scattered the grass on the plain and the trees on the hills, planted all that we eat and all that we hunt, this was long and long ago, when Danu’s children moved from the Palace of Glass to Sliebe na Gael down South.  It was the Deer-Rider’s ancestors who were charged with making the world green and it was those same folk who fought the ice wall that threatened to destroy us all.

“Now at this time the goddess Danu made every woman who had borne her first child take a child of Danu’s making.  This was the womb duty and some were good people who just needed to be born, but there were some that were changelings, and some were just evil so that the saying was, “trust a first, a third and a fourth, but never trust a second born nor a seventh.”  That was the womb duty, and that was what they were like, and then some were giants.”

“How could a woman give birth to a giant?”

“Ah, well that shows what you know, a giant isn’t born so.  How big were you when you were born? Not so very, but you ate and you grew.  Isn’t that so?”

“Yes sir.”

“Well that’s how it is with giants too.  They eat and they grow, they eat and they grow, and they eat and eat and eat and they grow grow grow.  A giant is always hungry and if you feed him he grows and he never stops growing until he stops eating.  That’s how it was with a fellow named Eochaid.

“Now this Eochaid was the second child of a man named Calvert Moss and his wife named Mandy.  That is he was a womb duty child, but they treated him as one of their own, and loved him like the rest of their children.  But Eochaid was the hungriest of all their children.  He was always hungry and his loving parents fed him and he grew and grew until he was much taller than an ordinary man even before he was twelve years old.  What made it worse was that none of the other Mosses, not even Calvert or Mandy, was tall.  In fact they were very short.

“The more the Mosses’ fed young Eochaid, the more he grew.  That was clear.  But there were other things that were odd.  Mandy’s eyes and hair were brown, Calvert’s hair was black, and his eyes were green, and so too, all the other Moss children were a mix of one or the other, but not Eochaid.  His hair was firey red, like copper.  His eyes were blue, like ice.  He was tall for his age, but he was born with teeth in his mouth, which went hard on poor Mandy, and too, He had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot.  SO, how do you know a giant when he is young?”

Bres pondered, “His fingers and his feet, his hair, and his height?”

“All good clues.  And this too, in his mouth you may see that he has two sets of teeth where you or I have only one.  That you may see when he is young, but you will know him as he is driven by his appetite to eat, and when allowed his way, he will not cease to grow.”

“You say you will know him, grandfather, are there no girl giants then?”

Dream-Walker smiled at his grand-son, ”Well that you have asked, for there are no giant females.  These creatures are the Nephilim reborn and they take there wives from among normal men, if you imagine that a woman who would be the wife of a giant is in any way normal.”

“And Eochaid was one of them?  Giants I mean, not giant wives.”

“He was that, but he was the first of them and he was more influenced by his family who loved him than by others.  The giants grew wicked.  Their hunger made them selfish and a bit mad, I think.  Eochaid grew and grew.  He had six fingers on each hand and six toes to a foot, he had copper hair and cold eyes, but Eochaid had a remarkable father and mother and loving brothers and sisters and that made all the difference.

“So, though he grew to be twice the size of a man, and more, he used his great strength and size to help the people who loved him and who he loved.  I’ve told you about the great underground raths of the Deer-Riders.  When the Norfolk fought to save the plains and stood against the advancing ice it was the raths that Eochaid built that made it possible, that kept them safe, that kept them warm.

The Gaels had a legend of a man who used his strength to benefit his people and this “good god” or “the Dagda” had a great appetite and used his strength to make great ring forts.  They called him the Dagda but the legend says that he was first called Eochaid.  Strange to think them both named the same, but the new Eochaid came to be called after the old, a rath builder, enormously strong, good, they called him the Dagda.”

Bres eyed his grandfather skeptically, “Really Grandfather, do you think that story is true?”

Dream-Walker carefully got to his feet, “I do, I believe that and more.  But right now I believe that we have a fish to catch.”

“The Bass of Knowledge?”

“The same.”  And hand in hand they walked down to the pond.

Welcome to another tale of the Dream-Walker.  These stories grew out of an idea for a people who live to the north of the Gaellic Plain of Tir na Nua called Deer Riders, the Norfolk, or by some Bramblewood Elves.  The Dream-Walker is a wild seer, not a shaman or a holy man of any sort, but a man who can slip his body and walk time and space, see things nobody else could see, and return to his time and his own place on the those Gaellic Plains among the Scythians.  He has kept his journeys secret for most of his life, but now he is elderly and he shares his stories with his grandsons.  You can read the first story (which got totally out of hand) it begins with Concerning the Deer Riders.

Dream-Walker and the Giant

“Is this really the best way to catch a fish?” Asked the young plains rider, skeptically.

“Well, if you’re old like me young fellow, this is not only the best way, it’s the only way to catch a fish.”  The man chuckled.

“Catching a fish is boring, if you ask me.” said the boy.

“As I remember, you asked me, Bres,” said the old man. ”Catching a fish isn’t boring, its waiting to catch a fish that wears on a body.  You’ll see, when you catch one yourself.”

The man tipped his head back, sun warming his bald head, and let himself slip out of his shell, just a bit.  They called him Dream-walker, at least the Norfolk had, but he didn’t need to dream to do it.  Any moment of quiet contemplation could serve.  His dream self slipped into the pond and with eyes sharper than human and much sharper than his withered human shell, he looked for a fish worth the name and a memory for his grandson.

With a gasp and a snort he came back to himself.  The boy eyed him accusingly.  “See?  Boring Grandfather, you went to sleep.  Tell me that isn’t boring,” said the boy, but returned to contemplating the spot where his line disappeared into the still water of the pond.

“Well Bres, my boy, the secret to finding a fish is thinking like a fish.”

“How do I do that?” said the boy, exasperated but interested.

“Well, if you were a fish, what would you want?”

The boy pondered that awhile, his plump cheeks puffed out and his eyes squinting, “I guess I’d want food.”

Bres was the youngest and always the hungriest of his grandsons so the old man was ready for his answer, “Sure you’re right, a fish wants food, but for a big fish, for a fish that lives past being a fry, such a fish wants protection first.  There is always a heron or an eagle looking for a meal too.  The fish wants to eat, but if he has lived long enough to be worthy of catching he has always wanted NOT to be eaten still more.

“I never thought of that,” said Bres.

“And you’ve caught no fish,” said the old man.

The boy looked over at his grandfather and his smile turned sly,”but grandfather, you haven’t caught a fish either.”

“Oh ho,” laughed the man, and he reached over to tickle the boy, “do you think I don’t know where the fish are?  I’ve caught more fish than you’ve eaten. I just didn’t want to make you feel bad.”

The plump little boy squealed with delight, “oh grandfather.”

“Let me help you boy.  Why I know where the Bass of Knowledge lies right over there in the pond.”

“The Bass of Knowledge?” Bres asked skeptically.

“Why it’s the biggest meanest fish anywhere around here.  It has lived for a hundred years at least and all that time it has listened to the whispering of the wind and the murmur of the land and it has rested in this pond near the Dagda, so it has heard all his dreams too.”

“The Dagda?  What is the Dagda?” asked Bres, fishing and the Bass of Knowledge forgotten for the moment. 

Bres was the man’s favorite grandson, though he knew he shouldn’t have favorites, and the man was no doubt Bres’ favorite grandfather too.  The man always took pride in how he had a nose for a story.

“Bres my boy, let’s give the Bass of Knowledge a little more time to listen to the wind and to the land and to the giant’s dreams. Let’s you and I have a walk and a stretch and I’ll tell you about the Dagda.”  They pulled in their lines and set them aside, then hand in hand they walked up the hill that held the little pond in its embrace.

She was asleep on the ground.  Around her were arrayed bags and travois, bales of hide and smaller lumps, like a play fort you might make.  At first it seemed she slept there alone.  I only had eyes for my friend.  I knew her face, but there was something quite different about it, longer and with sharper angles.  “Jella?”

She gasped and sat up, “Dream-walker?”  A couple of the lumps around her stirred and one sat up.  Oddly, this one looked almost as much like the Jella I remembered as did the one I had first identified as my friend.  Eerily this younger Jella pointed at me and laughed.  The little one spoke her strange tongue and was answered by my friend and yet not my friend. 

Jella threw back her covering of sleeping skins and rose.  I was not so young that I couldn’t tell that this was now not the girl I had first seen, but a woman.  She quickly covered the shift she slept in with buckskin and colorful woolens.

She looked me in the eye, and a smile twitched the corner of her mouth. Her generous lips did not move more than that, but I heard in my head, “You haven’t changed in all these years, I wasn’t sure I’d see you again.”

I’m fairly certain I frowned, because I saw one reflected on her smooth adult face, “Ah, are you still in the sidhe?  But I left you the lamp and the flint. . .” I suspect my frown turned to a blush, because her smile returned and she said, “did you forget?”  She tsked, and I was uncomfortably reminded of my own mother, ” It should be right there at the beginning of the souterrain.”

“The tunnel thing?  I forgot that too.” I felt heat on my face and neck and was sure now that if I wasn’t blushing before I was now.  “It is so dark.”

“Well, the sun should be rising.  It may not light your way much, but it should help you find the center.  At mid-day the light should point you toward the souterrain as it is due north.”

I mumbled thanks.  She smiled.  Her hair was much longer than before.  It was braided in thick ropes with bits of bright bead and bright cloth or leather, I wasn’t sure.  I thought her very lovely.

“Dream-walker, meet my children.”  She reached over and roused the lump on the other side from the little Jella who stared at me with big blue eyes.  A tossle-haired boy sat up.  “My children, Oren and Joy.”

“How is it that you have lived your life and I am still in this hole?” I thought to her.

“I can’t say,” She looked puzzled, “Perhaps you can walk through time as well as through. . .” She shrugged.  “. . .You would know better than I.  Mostly I see the dead, you were the first living spirit I ever saw.  And until now the last as well.”

“You see the spirits of the dead?” I asked her as if I had not just heard her say so.  I blushed again.

She nodded, but otherwise took no notice of the question, “If you were outside of your time when first we met I wonder what time you are in now?  We have not lived in a sidhe in a six-year and more.  I think that one has been sealed for eleven years since I saw you that night.  There may have been another clan that took refuge, but we have avoided the old secret places, riding with the deer, to keep them safe and ourselves free.”

“To keep yourself free?  What threatens you?”

Her face was pale from sleep, but she paled still more, “Could you possibly have not met the foul ones, the devourers?” Jella frowned not in anger but with concern.  “Why are you alone in the sidhe, why haven’t your people come for you Dream-Walker?”

“I’m a scout, a searcher, I seek out new places for my people.  We have been at a great river to the south.”

“Are you saying that your people are not in the secret place?  They are still at the River?  In the open?”

“My people always live in the open. . .”

“No no, they must not.  The hordes of foul ones will kill and feed.  You should not have come into the north.  It has not been safe since before the giants came, and they are the worst of all.

“I can see you live on the land.  Why can you do it but my folk can not?”

“You do not know.  We track them, we watch.  We herd the deer away to the far north.  Dream-Walker, your folk must be warned.  There is a great gathering of the foul ones.  They are on the march.  It is all we can do to keep the herds from them, to stay alive and free from them.  If they find you they will gather and kill you all.  They are made to destroy man, we are food to them.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“We have gone into the far north.  That as much as any reason is why we left the sidhe that sheltered us during the long winters.  This new plague of monsters and giants is worse than that of ice.  You must warn your people, Dream-walker, you must warn everyone that the dark hordes will come and they must flee or die.” Jella’s face hardened, “Go to your people Dream-Walker.  It may be too late already. . .”

And as if her words had the power I was snatched away.  My friend and her family shrunk to a tan blotch among the smaller blotches of the herd and then they were gone. As I rose I saw the great whiteness of the frozen wastes beyond.  I flew across mountains, watching the white, ice-locked peaks dwindle.  I saw below me the stony knob and the hidden place in the bramble wood with its sidhe where I guessed I lay, but I did not stop nor slow though I drew near the ground. 

Along the river I saw a man.  He strode along the banks and suddenly I saw that he was immense.  He dwarfed the trees.  The giant man had hair of red and he looked at me as if he saw me.  I rushed along the river, there were creatures among the trees.  I saw an army of them, armored, and armed for battle. 

Then I was in our camp.  The creatures, foul ones Jella had called them, were all throughout it.  The morning sun cast evil glints off their cruel looking weapons dazzling my eyes.  My people were gone.  I looked to the sun.

This continues:  Concerning the Deer Riders from the second installment, Deer Riders Continued

It was dim when I woke,  the deep shade of a forest, not of night.  I could see, so, since it was my job to search and seek, that is what I did.  I walked along the path in the dimness, not really knowing what time of day it might be or what direction I was going.

I believed that the water and the valley I had seen was on my left, but I knew little more.  I hoped to come out to where I could see the sky, but I walked longer and then twice longer than I thought I should have.

I was frustrated.  I felt sure I had not missed a turning, but it seemed that I had.  I remembered walking past the steps rising out of the stream-bed and went back, now looking to my right where I expected to see the open vale.

This turning was more secret, but there it was, over grown and laid so that it could easily be missed by someone who didn’t know the way.

Then too, it was overgrown and I had to pick my way through invading brambles.  Slowly and painfully I made my way until fighting through a particularly thick stand of ropey, spine studded, whips I stepped out into a riot of flowers.

I wondered why I had not smelled them, but one moment there was only green leaves and pain, then the next I was beneath the sun, it was past mid-day, and surrounded by wild flowers of so many kinds that I could not ever remember seeing their like.

I looked back along my way and saw only a green wall of bramble-thorn.  I had a queasy feeling, I feared a magic other than that of growing things, but soon enough I found where I had come.  I tore at the brambles and pulled them aside to mark my way.  I looked around a little to get my bearings so that I could find this path again.

The green wall ran off, bending away each way.  Whereas I had come out into flowers, one way seemed blocked, or rather filled in with a riot of big leaves and huge yellow flowers. The other way was walled off with smaller trees and the brambles had made inroads, out from the green wall was a tall grass like plant that was above my head.

I tore out a few of these big stocks with what seemed to be grain pods on the sides instead of at the top like the oats and wheat with which I was familiar.  I placed my uprooted stocks against and holding open my path.  I marked the smaller trees and my hole into the bramble. 

I guessed the water was through the tall stocks and having marked well my exit in my mind I began to make my way through the tall grass.

In truth the going was easy.  So big were these things that they seemed to dominate looked at in depth, but they were not solid like a field of grain.  The big leafy, yellow flowered plants grew around and even climbed upon the stalks and everywhere there were flowers.  There were other plants I knew, rooting plants, and there were pod plants that climbed the big stalks like the yellow flower plants.

All chaos and randomness, but it dawned on me that most or all of these plants might well be good for food.  I looked around me and could see nothing, but the big stalks and slight sign of my passing behind me.  It seemed I was lost in some mad man’s garden.  Not many steps later the the tasseled stalks thinned and I could see ahead to a stacked stone wall.

Beyond the wall was turf, some of the plants I had seen were growing, widely dispersed, in what I guessed were pats of old manure.  And beyond that, cat-tails and then the water.  Now I could see the fall down a rocky tumble of the stream I had navigated.  At the top of the cascade was the grill-work, the first strangeness, I had recognized as such.

I looked along the bank, following the line of cat-tails to where. . .

. . . I gasped, there across a section of lake was the hill I had seen in my dream, my dream flight, my seeing.  I remembered myself, I was in the midst of some one’s place, I knew not who or whether they would want a visitor.  I quickly slipped over the stone fence.

Of course they did not want visitors.  I lay next to the wall thinking hard on my next move.  I had found the watch place above the stream, the cunning back cut trails, the circling, bramble girdled, wood all of these spoke of secrecy, not welcome.  But I had wandered far, I had stumbled around and met no resistance save deception, and the watch place, well that was moldering in long abandoned disuse.

I had given myself a shock.  But this place seemed to me, abandoned, and yet a wonder that needed exploration.  I determined to press on, but more carefully.  If there were jealous defenders, I would try not to arouse them.

I moved back into the mixed planting where I could see the wall but not much else.  Moving along it brought me through into places that seemed even less cultivated and more wild. I found another stand of trees like the ones I had seen at a distance.  These were heavy with fruit, but beneath them there were wasted fruits and a whole forest of seedlings springing from the fallen waste.

Just beyond this the water widened still more, coming right to my wall with no margin, and beyond it was the large central mound.  Right near to me was a smaller mound.  I determined to see if I could find my way into it.  I was nervous being so exposed, but passing around the bulk of the thing I found a stone lined cut with intricately decorated beams bracing them.  Looking closer I saw that the stone wall had carvings as well, here and there, but the wood was completely covered.

The cut was stopped at the back with more carved wood and more dressed stone.  There seemed to be two great doors positioned in the middle of the space, but in one of them was a much smaller portal and this one was ajar, whether the wall was just a wall or in truth a huge gateway, I could not tell.

I stepped into the cool interior, it was dark and I could not see anything but a little of the stone floor lit by the opened door.  The stone was very well dressed, tightly fit, there seemed to be gouge marks that ran from stone to stone as if they had been scoured by the same heavy hand.

Leaving the entrance I examined the walls.  The drawings there were marvelously fascinating.  There were pictographs of things I could make out, salmon, boar, deer, and there was much more that I could not imagine what they might be.  These carvings, all together on the rocks and carved into the heavy beams, meant nothing to me, I could make no sense of any of it, and finally gave it up.

I looked around the small hollow from my vantage at the front of the cut.  Here and their were sections dominated by trees bearing fruit.  The rest seemed strangely random.  Not far from me was the hill.  I gazed about me for signs of habitation I had missed, but finding none I walked toward the hill that I felt must be central to explaining this strange place.

I came on a hedge of sorts, low lying and dense.  I inspected it for thorns and finding none, I pushed through it.  Again I was presented with a variety of plants that looked like food plants I had gathered myself.  Seeing what looked like a sweet root plant, if perhaps a bit larger than the wild ones I knew and loved, I pulled it from the ground and found what I’d expected.  It tasted sweet and earthy and I promised myself I would keep my eyes open for more.

I glanced over at the hedge and was surprised to see clusters of mushrooms at its base, shaded by the hedge.  They looked good to eat, but I left them alone.  Near at hand was a big plant with small white flowers like the eating tuber plants we found when I was younger.  Lately they had not been seen and I confess I missed the lumpy things.  I grabbed hold of the bushy plant and heaved.  I fell, showering myself with dirt, but when I had recovered I examined the plant I had uprooted.  Around the base of it were many small red tubers.  I dug around in the disturbed earth where I’d uprooted the plant and found more and larger tubers. 

If only I had some wild onion, I thought, and there, not many steps away, were spikes of green just like what I sought.  Though young and small they were indeed what I’d hoped to find.  I stowed all the delicacies I found and started thinking about fire and a way to start one.

The day was fading fast in the tree ringed hollow so I made a dash for the top of the hill to have a look before all the light was gone.  On top of  that grassy knoll was a low circle of stones.  I looked around and could only marvel that such plenty seemed abandoned.  I remembered my need for firewood.  The orchard with the spoiled fruit might have something but I crossed the stone circle to see if there might be something even closer that would provide the needed wood for my feast.  I saw how a little stream bent around the hill and where it widened out into another little pond.

I stepped again into the middle to look once more for fallen wood.  I felt the ground give a little.  Sometimes one can find a burrow of coneys in that way and a whole group will erupt from their ruined home.  I stomped down a bit harder, with the intent to cave in what had given but slightly.  I heard a crunching and a dry snap and felt myself falling.  I desperately tried to spread myself to catch at the edge of the cave in I realized I had caused, but it seemed to me that the whole of the top of the hill, at least as far as I could reach, was falling into darkness.  There was a roaring as of a great wind and then I knew nothing for some time.

I guess this isn’t the conclusion yet.  Stay tuned for the Deer Riders, the Conclusion, part 2.