Deception's Princess (Princesses of Myth) (37 page)

“I can’t forgive him,” I muttered. “Not yet.”

“Then see him now and smile as though he’s done nothing that needs forgiveness. It’s only for a little while. You’re going to a new life. For your own sake, take none of the old heartaches with you when you leave.”

I did as Devnet asked, though not without a great burden of misgiving. I forced myself to see Father as I’d known him when he was still my champion, my hero, the shining warrior and king who could do no wrong and who always seemed to love me best. When the day of my departure came, he wept. So did I, but not because I was leaving him.

The journey to Lord Artegal’s stronghold was long but made pleasant by good company. Devnet had declared he’d come with me, and no one wanted to tell a bard what he could and couldn’t do.

I rode in the chariot we’d taken from Morann, the same one Father gave him when his stallions ran away with me. The
former king of the Fir Domnann raised no objections. Two days after his arrival in Cruachan, our royal captive had made the serious mistake of insulting the High King grievously. That was what rumor claimed, for no one seemed to know any person who’d actually witnessed the affront. In any case, an armed challenge had been the only remedy.

Now Morann’s head shared the lintel of our doorway with Fachtna Fáthach’s. Devnet glanced up at it before we left. “What a price to pay for a broken harp,” he said.

Father insisted that Fechin be my driver. The battle-hardened charioteer spent most of the trip recounting stories that all began with “I remember when you were just a baby” and all ended with “But now you’re a young woman and you probably won’t remember me when we meet again.” It was very funny having to dry a grown man’s sentimental tears and reassure him daily that he’d never be forgotten. Devnet’s vehicle kept pace alongside and our bard was kindhearted enough to pretend he saw nothing of Fechin’s distress.

When the heights of Dún Beithe came into sight, Devnet and I decided to walk the rest of the way, sending Fechin ahead to announce us. It was partly to stretch our legs and partly to escape from his ever-growing urge to sniffle his way through tales of my childhood. The driver of the cart carrying my possessions overtook us and we got some odd looks from him, but we waved him on and kept walking.

“You know, Fechin’s not the only one who’s afraid you’ll forget him,” Devnet remarked casually. He stopped and removed his gold earrings. “Take these to remember me by, Princess.”

I held up my hands, fending off the gift. “They’re too valuable. I’m afraid I’d lose them.”

“So you’ve taken my advice to heart. You want nothing to remind you of your old life.” He sounded disappointed.

“I
need
nothing for that,” I corrected him gently. “I don’t hold memories in my hand, but I’ll never let them go.”

He smiled. “It’s too bad you were born a princess. You might have made a fine bard.”

“Might?”
I teased.

Suddenly a distant shape skimmed across the sky above Dún Beithe. I cried out joyfully, seeing the curve of wings, the grace that no bard’s poetry could capture, the glorious spectacle of a falcon in flight.

“Is that your bird?” Devnet asked, shading his eyes.

“I don’t know,” I said in a hushed, awestruck voice. And then, “It doesn’t matter.”

That was no lie. In that moment, on that road to a fresh life, a new world, I knew the truth that touched my spirit: With or without wings, I, too, owned the power to fly. I owned myself. Nothing tied me to the past but what I chose to carry from it in my heart. I could be more than what other people named me, expected of me, decided for me. I would prove that I was something greater than the king of Connacht’s daughter: I was no one’s but my own. I was Maeve.

I was free.

As I continue adding new heroines to the Princesses of Myth series, even though they come from ancient cultures as distant and different from one another as Greece and Japan, Egypt and Ireland, there seems to be one thing that these young women have in common: Try as I may, I simply
cannot remember
where I first heard about them. Whether they are historical, mythical, or legendary ladies, I have no idea how we first “met” or how I became interested in their lives to the point where I wanted to
create
more about them.

It’s the same with Maeve. I don’t recall our initial meeting, but she must have made an absolutely smashing first impression. I’m a nearly lifelong reader, thanks to parents who always found the time to read to me and to tell me stories. I got started reading independently before I entered kindergarten, so over the years I’ve encountered countless tales of girls and goddesses. Only a few had the power to strike a spark in my imagination. A spark ignites and blooms into a flame. A flame lights the way into the shadows, where the untold portions of my heroines’
stories stand waiting to be guessed at, built, embellished, and, ultimately, shared with you.

Maeve is not a historical person. She is a fictitious and fantastic part of Ireland’s heroic past. If she had been real, she would have lived around the first century CE. Her chief claim to fame comes from the epic
The Cattle Raid of Cooley
. The earliest version of this story is found in a twelfth-century manuscript. There are several things mentioned in the epic that are anachronisms—that is, references to things that didn’t exist in the first century. (If you watch a movie set in ancient Rome, you don’t want to see Julius Caesar wearing a wristwatch.) The work itself was created earlier than that, but there’s no way of knowing how old it really is.

A lot of things can happen to a story when there’s a big gap between the time it’s first told and the time it’s first written down. A popular story that’s been etched into a clay tablet, carved into the wall of a pyramid, inscribed on a scroll, printed in a book, or pixelated on your preferred e-reader is far more likely to remain unchanged than a story that’s repeated from one person to another. If you don’t believe this, watch a rumor morph into an urban myth or play a few games of “Telephone.”

Here’s something else you can believe about stories: When it’s a traditional tale that’s been spread by word of mouth alone—by bards and minstrels and marketplace storytellers and grandparents and kids at play—as soon as someone actually
writes it down
, the whole equation changes. Any variations are regarded as “wrong” because they don’t jibe with the written version, which is considered “right” merely because it’s not likely to change.

Permanence = Authenticity. The gates are locked; the playground is closed.

That’s where I decide to climb over the fence, and Maeve is just the girl to give me a boost. It helps that she doesn’t dwell in the realm of history and that the legends surrounding her leave out so much. Heroes of Ireland, like the great Cuchulain, have their childhood and youthful exploits detailed in song and story, but Maeve’s girlhood remains an elusive phantom wandering through misty forests, haunted ringforts, and beautiful, treacherous bog land.

Maeve’s closest cousin in the Princesses of Myth series is Helen. The places where their stories unfold are real enough—Sparta and Troy, Connacht and Ulster—but the women are not. There might have been any number of real young women who were very much like Helen and Maeve—spirited, independent, strong, and pretty—and their lives could have been the basis for the myths and legends that arose.

This is the same sort of thing that happened to King Arthur. Like Maeve and Helen, he didn’t really exist, but someone like him
might
have existed. The “real” Arthur would have lived around the sixth century CE. We know this because some legend-spinners claim he defeated the invading Saxon army at the battle of Mount Badon, which actually happened around 500 CE. On the other hand, the
historical
records name a victorious British leader, Ambrosius Aurelianus.

When you hear the words
King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table
, what image comes to mind? I always picture them wearing the heavy plate armor and full-face visored helmets of the late Middle Ages, the type most people think of when they hear the word
knight
. I also imagine them riding
armored horses, ready for a joust, and living in classic fairy-tale castles with drawbridges and stone towers.

None of these things existed in sixth-century Britain, but that didn’t stop the centuries-long list of writers who composed their own variations on the theme of King Arthur. (For the best example of some very radical changes, read Mark Twain’s
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
.) However, the writers did include some elements of the legends, the “flavor” of the old to enhance the new. The result? A blend of the traditional and the innovative.

A mash-up. (Yes, mash-ups
can
be zombie-, werewolf-, and vampire-free!)

That’s pretty much what Maeve’s story is, the way I’ve chosen to tell it. There’s a taste of her personality from
The Cattle Raid of Cooley
(the formidable personality of a woman who knows what she wants and isn’t about to quit until she gets it), a dollop of daily life in first-century Ireland, and the overall seasoning of legend, all properly combined and presented in the story of her girlhood as I’ve pictured it. As for matters geographic—the places and landscape where the action happens—you’ll also encounter a mix of the real Ireland and the Èriu of both legend and my imagination.

Whatever the ingredients, I hope you find the finished dish to your liking. I’ll be serving seconds in
Deception’s Prize
. Enjoy!

A note about historical material: Iron Age Ireland was out of the mainstream culture, so the material available can be iffy. Some of the accounts of life there in Maeve’s day are by writers who didn’t hold other civilizations in high esteem. To be
utterly flippant, it was often a case of Romans Rule, Celts Drool. Would you trust your enemy to write a fair newspaper story about
you
?

I didn’t think so.

The first-century Irish people didn’t leave any written versions of their own history. They did have a system of writing called
ogham
, but it didn’t appear until the sixth century CE and was mostly used for gravestone inscriptions. The stories remained in the memories of the bards and in the hearts of the people.

May they remain with us as well.

As a writer, I am sometimes called upon to read aloud from my books. I love seeing my readers’ reaction face to face, without the smoke, veils, and anonymity of the Internet. I will know straightaway just by looking at them if they’re not enjoying what I’ve written.

I will also know if they
do
like it.

It’s one thing to write a book and another to read from it. I know how to spell words like
yolk
and
espresso
and
Givenchy
, but reading them aloud is something else. For example, the yellow part of an egg is the “yoke.” I was pronouncing it “yolk” with an
l
. Sorry about that, folks.

So
now
what have I done? I’ve written a book filled with characters and places whose spelling often has little to do with how they should be pronounced. Welcome to the Romance of Romanization.

Not all languages use our alphabet. Some languages use a nonalphabetical system, such as the characters of written Chinese or the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt. Romanization lets us take a word from Chinese, Arabic, Cherokee, Hawaiian, Nahuatl, or the Celtic tongue of Maeve’s people and represent the sound of that word in a way that we can read.

I have no idea how the powers that be decide how to
represent the words of a particular language. Sometimes said powers even decide to change the previous Romanization. For example, the first dynasty of China—and the one that gave the country its name—was the
. This used to be Romanized as
Ch’in
, but now it’s
Qin
. Another example is the capital of China, once written in English as
Peking
but now written as
Beijing
. The change in Romanization happened in China in 1949 and then was slowly adopted by Western countries.