Fiction: Colm Ruadh and Rowan

The Singer of Songs, The Teller of Tales

Once, in a time now forgotten and in a place not totally unlike earth, there lived a great hero. A man of courage, with an understanding of both passion and of compassion. His name was Colm Ruadh and he was the leader among his people both in war and in peace, which made him unique in that place and time. For it was a time of turbulence and of confusion in the Kingdoms of Man. A time when the people of the different Kingdoms of Man were striving against each other and sometimes against the very world in which they lived. It was a time when the world itself was alive with creatures of all species that spoke with each other and with those of the Kingdoms of Man who would listen. It was also a time when the barriers between the Kingdoms of Man and the Kingdoms of the Fey were not as solid and impassable as they are now.

While the Kingdoms of Man battled against each other, the Kingdoms of the Fey watched with curiosity and with some concern. Concern that the anger and the pain that infected the Kingdoms of Man might spread across the thin veil between their worlds. Concern that the wars between the Kingdoms of Man might spill into the realms of the Fey or be carried into them intentionally by the warriors of the Kingdoms of Man. For the lands of the Fey were rich and beautiful. As rich and beautiful as the histories, the legends and the stories of the Fey. As rich and beautiful as the culture, the songs and the arts of the Fey. As rich and beautiful as the Fey, themselves. The Fey, though they often teased and toyed with the mortals of the Kingdoms of Man, were at peace with each other and had been for many more years than even the longest memories of their people could recall. The Fey were at peace with Mankind, too, for a while. But still they watched. Still they wondered. Still they worried.

In this time of watching a Council of the Leaders of the Kingdoms of the Fey met to discuss the problems of the wars between the Kingdoms of Man and how those wars could be prevented from spreading to the Kingdoms of the Fey. It was decided that, in order to fight the Kingdoms of Man, should that be necessary, the Fey would have to come to understand the ways Mankind. How Mankind lived, how they thought, what they dreamed of, what they feared, and most importantly of all, how Mankind fought.

While the Fey could watch the Kingdoms of Man from within the borders of Faerie, they could not interact with Mankind and more effectively learn their ways without crossing into the lands of the Kingdoms of Man. It was decided that some of the Fey would be allowed to move back and forth into the Kingdoms of Man in order to better learn the ways of men. For many years the Fey came and went quietly among the Kingdoms of Man watching, learning, but not interfering. Sometimes a mortal of the Kingdoms of Man would stumble through an opening in the border between the kingdoms and the Fey would take the opportunity to learn the stories and thoughts of that mortal before returning him to the Kingdoms of Man with only vague memories of the beautiful lands and sweet voices of the Fey.

All of this watching and learning was helpful to the Fey in small ways. But, ultimately, it did not achieve the understanding that they needed to be able to fight off the sickness of the wars of the Kingdoms of Man. For, though a bird may watch a fish swim and learn how it is done, the bird is still not capable of swimming with the fish. And this was the final conclusion of the Council of Leaders of the Fey regarding the Years of Learning as they were coming to be called. So another course of action had to be determined and the Council of Leaders of the Fey adjourned to their own Kingdoms to consider how next to proceed to protect the Kingdoms of the Fey from the wars of Mankind.

But many of the Fey continued to travel back and forth from their kingdoms to those of the mortals. In time some of the Fey became so comfortable in the Kingdoms of Man that a binding grew between them and those places they favored, their havens, in the Kingdoms of Man. These bindings were quite powerful and were often beyond even the strength of the Fey themselves to break. So strong were they that the Fey could be drawn to their havens in the Kingdoms of Man by the sheer strength of the binding. Even in defiance of their own intentions. The places of their bindings became known among the mortals in the Kingdoms of Man as magical or haunted or simply enchanted. Eventually, some of the Fey became so attached to the enchanted locations that they frequented that they were as much a part of the Kingdoms of Man as they were of the Kingdoms of the Fey.

By the time the Council of Leaders of the Kingdoms of the Fey realized that this was happening, many of their people had become firmly established in both worlds. The Council feared that the people of the Kingdoms of Man might begin to observe the Fey among them and begin to learn the ways of the Fey as they had tried to learn the ways of Mankind. This caused great concern among the Lords of the Fey. While they could not prevent their people from moving back and forth between the two worlds, they could, and did, forbid them to move about within the Kingdoms of Man. If one of the Fey had grown a binding, for example, to a lake or a forest or a mountain crag, to that place and that place only could they travel in the Kingdoms of Man. The bindings themselves prevented the Fey from being away for any length of time or at any great distance from the place to which they had become bound.

Our tale begins in one of the enchanted places, a great forest of mighty trees and gentle creatures who came to live there because of the Dryad who protected the forest and its creatures. They came because of the sanctuary she offered, and they came because of her great love for all the living creatures of the woods. Most of all, they came because of the wondrous songs and stories she would share with them every day. The stories of the heroes and the legends of the Kingdoms of the Fey.

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The Darkling Wood before him meant half the distance off of this day’s journey, but it also meant a far greater risk to his life and sanity. For it was said that the wood was bewitched. It was said that a man could enter it and come out with out mischance. Or, he could enter it and come home so changed that even his own kin would not know him ever again... if he came out at all. But Colm Ruadh, Red Colm as we would say it now, was weary. He had fought a great battle with war and death these past few days. A battle he had won, at the talks of treaty and peace with an old enemy. A victory he hoped would buy time for his Clan to grow used to the ways of peace and of prosperity. Weary, was not the way to enter a haunted place, but the hours saved, should he come through the wood safely, could be hours spent in rest before his own hearth. Hesitation would not see him home, either way, so he urged his horse onto the path through the Darkling Wood and rode to meet whatever the wood might hold for him that day.

The path was shaded and cool, but it appeared to offer no threat as he moved through the wood. In fact, the wood seemed to welcome him into its quiet realm. The air was soft and sweet with the smell of the evergreens that colored it year round, and filled with the rustling whisper of the gentle breeze through their branches. The light playing through the canopy of dark green often caught tiny motes of dust or falling needles as they danced with joy in the warm light. It was as if the forest more than welcomed him, it seemed to offer him sanctuary and haven. That is, until his horse grew restive with something it could sense, but Colm Ruadh could not.

Sadly, Colm Ruadh did not have the way of speaking with animals as many of the Bards and the Priests still did. He could not ask the nature of his horse’s unease, nor could he offer more comfort than the quiet, calm of his voice to soothe the nervous creature. As they moved farther into the wood it seemed to grow more comforting to Colm ruadh and more agitating to his horse. Indeed, so restive did the creature become, that Colm Ruadh was having great difficulty keeping him on the path at all. Colm had decided it might actually be faster to turn back and circle the woods, after all, when the choice was taken from him entirely.

A wolf, large, gray, and silent, loped across the path directly under the nose of Colm Ruadh’s horse. So odd was this behavior, for the wolf is normally shy and distant unless hunting, that Colm was surprised into motionlessness by the wolf’s appearance. More surprised was he, however, by his horse’s response to the wolf. For, though his horse did rear, throwing him into the arms of a great tree, which was no surprise, it then ran off through the woods on the trail of the great wolf. Which was a very great surprise. The route that he had hoped would have saved Colm Ruadh a half a day’s journey appeared to now be likely to cost him more time than that, and maybe a good horse, as well.

Resigned to the loss of time, but not to the loss of his horse, Colm Ruadh set off on the trail of both horse and wolf. The path through the wood, which the animals had taken, was surprisingly well worn. As if it were traveled every day. Although that was not possible, for there was no one in all of the Kingdoms of Man who would live in a haunted place, such as the Darkling Wood, and animals almost never used the same track consistently enough to wear it down as heavily as this track appeared to be worn. Nonetheless, the track was there, it showed indications that both the wolf and his horse had followed it, and Colm Ruadh was too tired to do more than puzzle at the curiosity of the path as he followed it. As he followed it almost to the heart of the haunted forest, the Darkling Wood.

As he approached the heart of the wood, Colm Ruadh began to notice that the murmur of the breeze through the trees was starting to sound like a song. Not one that he knew, nor one that he had ever heard before, but it very definitely was a song. As he drew closer to the heart of the wood, he began to understand bits of the song. Not the words, for he had no way of knowing the language of the breeze or of the trees. Yet, somehow, he understood the song they were singing. Stunned by this realization, Colm stopped. Was he beginning to be enchanted by the forest? Was this the way the haunting began to change a mortal so that even his kin did not know him? Once it was started, could he stop the enchantment by closing his ears to the singing? Since he didn’t even know how he understood the song, could he stop the song from singing in his mind by simply closing his ears to it? And how could he answer any of these questions without knowing where the song came from? Colm Ruadh moved on down the path toward the heart of the Darkling Wood and the source of the song.

Almost at the heart of the great wood, Colm Ruadh began to smell the salt of the great loch around the end of which the Darkling Wood had grown. True, the people of Colm Ruadh’s Clan and of other clans fished and traveled on the surface of the great loch, but they did not approach the end that entered into the Darkling Wood with any less fear than they approached that wood on foot. Even the people of Colm Ruadh’s Clan who lived on the very shores of the great loch admitted that the dark end of the loch seemed to forbid and lure at the same time, that it was as haunted as the wood that surrounded it. It was to the very tip of the dark end of the loch, to this place of deepest enchantment that Colm Ruadh followed his horse, the horse who still followed the great, gray wolf.

It was here, with the smell of salt water combining with the sweet smell of evergreens and wild flowers, that Colm Ruadh found the singer of the song that had begun to haunt him. He stopped before he entered the glade which opened in front of him, in part because he did not want to be seen by the singer and in part because he was so astounded by yet another improbable sight. There in the clearing, side by side stood Colm Ruadh’s horse and the large gray wolf. Side by side and both drawn as close as they could get to the singer, who sat at the center of a ring of wild animals, predator and prey, creatures of air, of the land, and even of the water, who had been drawn to the heart of the Darkling Wood to hear the singer and her songs.

She was so beautiful. Not in a way that Colm Ruadh could describe later, but in a way that he knew within his soul and his mind. As he did not understand her words yet he understood her song, so he could not describe her appearance, yet he knew that he would see her clearly for the rest of his life as he saw her on that day. In that same way, he knew that she was Fey, a Dryad, a sprite of the wood. A creature of the wood, but not of this wood, one who sheltered in the wood and who gave shelter to the wood. A Dryad dwelt at the heart of the Darkling Wood. It was one of the Fey that haunted the wood. And Colm Ruadh was the only mortal who knew of it and had not been changed by that knowledge. Yet.

Colm Ruadh hid behind the trunk of a mighty Fir, one that had seen many generations of his ancestors pass through the Kingdoms of Man and into the World of Dreams. The song of the Dryad was beautiful and alluring. As with the many animals of the Forest, Colm found himself wanting to move closer to the singer, so as not to miss even a word of her song. The tale she told in her song was one of joy and light. A song of a place where the forest grew tall and spread across the land untouched by fire or destruction. A place that seemed so wonderful, while she sang of it, that Colm Ruadh felt his heart breaking with a longing for that lovely, distant land that he had never seen. Each time the longing grew in him to see her land or to approach closer to the singer, he would grip the ragged bark of the ancient tree until he could feel it stinging into the flesh of his palm and the longing would pass. Indeed, it seemed to him that even the trees of the Darkling Wood leaned closer to the singer at times. He knew that they were passing her song back and forth among them so that even those on the edge of the wood might share it, for had he not heard their singing himself?

How long he stood, listening to the songs of the Dryad, Colm Ruadh did not know. When the song finally finished, and the singer rose to go, she promised to return again the next day at the same time for another tale of the Kingdoms of the Fey. Then she turned into the wood across from Colm Ruadh’s hiding place and it seemed as if she vanished into a tree. Not as if she had walked into the trees and disappeared among them, but as if she had literally walked up to another mighty fir and simply stepped into it, become a part of it. Colm Ruadh waited quietly, absorbing the beauty of all he had heard and the significance of all he had seen. He waited for the many animals of the wood, water and air to return to their homes and lives. He waited, too, to be certain that the singer was well and truly gone before he stepped into sight. When the glade seemed almost empty, he stepped into it and walked over to the two creatures still remaining within the glade. His horse unharmed and now free of the enchantment of the Dryad, and the great gray wolf who sat quietly and watched him with interested and unfrightened yellow eyes. Careful not to startle his horse, Colm took its reins in his hands and spoke softly to it, touched its warm nose to be sure that it was well. It seemed to be, so he mounted.

As he began to turn the horse out of the glade and down to the edge of the loch, Colm noticed that the wolf still sat quietly and watched him. As if he felt that some courtesy was due the creature for having guided his horse and, therefore, himself to the glade that day, Colm Ruadh spoke to the wolf in the manner and language of men and thanked him for the “invitation”. The wolf seemed to smile at him, rose to his feet and trotted out of the Glen past the tree in which the Dryad seemed to have disappeared. Colm turned his horse toward the shore and trotted out of the glen and along the banks of the loch toward his home, and the world to which he belonged.

Had he looked back, he might have seen the Dryad step again from the tree. He might have seen her as she watched depart the mysterious mortal whom she had felt enter her wood as she had begun to gather her friends for the tale that day. The man she had felt meant no harm to her wood, and whom she felt might come to understand and love it as she did. The man she had sent the wolf to bring to the circle in the glade. The only mortal of the Kingdoms of Man whom she had ever allowed to enter her wood and leave it unscathed after having seen her face or heard her voice.

Colm Ruadh did not look back. He did, however, notice the seal swimming at the edge of the loch as he rode around it and toward the lights of his village and home. The seal was large for his kind, with brown fur and deep brown eyes. It had been one of the creatures of the water who had gathered around the Dryad as she sang of the land of her birth. He thought it must have been as deeply affected by the song of the Dryad as he himself had been, for it swam along beside him, following his path along the shore almost to the very lights of his home. Strange behavior for a seal, but perhaps not for one who had recently come under the spell of the Fey as this one had.


Colm Ruadh did not share the tale of his afternoon’s journey with his kin when he settled by his own fire that night. He told them of the negotiations, of the compromises which he had reached with their ancient enemies, and he spoke of the high regard in which those enemies had spoken of the courage of his warriors in battle. But he did not speak of the Dryad, her song or even of the gray wolf. He did not speak of them for fear his people would think he had been enchanted. For fear that they might try to destroy the wood or the Dryad who guarded it. Most of all, he did not tell them for fear that they might try to stop him from returning to the wood to hear another tale of the Fey the next day. For that was what Colm Ruadh planned to do.

The next day, as the sun approached the height of midday, Colm tucked a little food into his sporran, saddled his horse and rode it back to the edge of the wood. Just before he reached the borders of the wood, Colm stopped his horse, dismounted, and tied it in a shady spot by a small stream. He then walked into the wood and began to move quietly through the trees just out of sight of the shoreline. He had decided that he would get to the glen early, slip into a hiding place and wait for the Dryad to return and sing another of her tales. With very little trouble Colm Ruadh found the glade and settled in place, this time in the lower branches of the same tree he had hidden behind the day before. All he need do was wait, watch, and listen, then slip quietly away when the tale was done.

Colm sat there on the branch of the tree for only a short time before he felt a stirring in the mighty fir. As if it were waking from a long sleep and beginning to stretch its branches. He knew the Dryad must be close, but he was stunned to see her step from the trunk of the very tree in which he had settled. Fortunately, she did not look up into its branches. Colm Ruadh kept very still and quiet so as not to cause her to look upwards. The Dryad sat in the center of the glade as she had the day before and made no sound, at all. She did not call, or sing, or even speak, yet everywhere Colm Ruadh looked in the glade the creatures of the forest were coming to her. Settling about her as they had the day before. The first to arrive had been the gray wolf of the day before. He came to the Dryad, seemed to smile at her with his quiet eyes, then lay down beside her in the center of the glade. Creatures of the air settled at first on the upper branches of the trees, then moved down to the lower branches. Colm was concerned that those settling near him might cause the Dryad to look upwards to greet them, but she did not. In fact, she seemed to greet each and every creature as they came into the glade except those who settled around Colm Ruadh.

As the creatures of the loch began to leave the shelter of the water and move into the glade, she spoke even to them. The otters, the fishing birds, the seals all were greeted as they arrived. When the largest of the seals moved into the circle, the other creatures all gave way to it and even the Dryad rose and curtsied very low. Colm Ruadh could not understand the language in which she spoke, but knew the Seal must be very old or very powerful among its kind for the Dryad to grant it such special regard.

As he puzzled the question of the Dryad’s reaction to the seal, Colm heard the Dryad speak again, softly, and he stopped thinking and listened with all the other creatures to what she was saying. He listened to her song, to the words she spoke in a language he did not know, and understood her tale, as before, with his heart and not with his mind. Today the Dryad told not one, but two tales. The several songs she sang weaving together in his mind with the light and breeze and the colors of the forest, as if they were a part of the song, itself. When she had finished, the Dryad rose, thanked all for coming and promised another tale the next day. She turned toward the tree in which Colm Ruadh hid and walked into its heart. Again Colm felt the branch beneath him stretch and stir before it then settled back into a normal tree-like stillness.

The glade cleared, as it had the day before, except for the great gray wolf, who sat quietly looking at the tree in which Colm Ruadh was hiding. Not at the trunk where the Dryad had disappeared, but at the branches, indeed, the very branch upon which Colm Ruadh sat. Colm knew that the keen nose of the wolf had detected what the eyes of the Dryad had missed in the chaos of all the arrivals. So, when he was certain that the Dryad was truly gone, Colm climbed down from the tree and walked over to the gray wolf. Colm dropped to one knee in front of the wolf and reached out as if he would touch the creature. The wolf did not move. Colm stopped just short of touching the great wolf’s head and spoke to it as he had the day before.

“I do not understand your mistress, my friend.” Colm told the wolf. “I do not understand how she comes to be here, nor how she enters and leaves this place. I do understand that she is Fey, and that I am in danger when I come here. Yet I cannot find a place in my heart that would allow me to harm her or those who come here to hear her words. I don’t know how to make you understand this, but I will do neither you nor her any harm. I will do all within my power to keep others from doing you harm, as well. I and my people live in the village but 1hours journey from here around the east side of the loch. If you or she have need of me, bring me word and I will come. With all the warriors of my clan, if need be, to help or to protect you. This I promise you as Chieftain of my people.”

“We do not have need of your protection, Chieftain of the People of Lochside”, came the voice of the Dryad from behind Colm Ruadh. He spun about to face her, rising to his feet at the same time. For one should always face one’s doom on your feet, ready to fight before you fall. “We, the creatures of the wood, even the wood itself know our place within the Kingdoms of Man. We are subordinate to the laws of your world as are you. If we must fall, we will fall. Do not fear for us.”

“Lady of the Darkling Wood, I do fear for you. This is a hard world and not the gentle one into which you were born, the world of which you sing. As you say, I cannot change the course of life, but I can stand in defiance of that course and refuse to let it take me or those I cherish without resistance.” Colm responded quietly.

The Dryad laughed, it sounded like a breeze through an orchard, all the little leaves clapping with joy as it passed among them. “Would you defy the river as it runs in spate down through your hills? Would you defy the avalanche as it falls from the great peaks of the mountain onto the lower slopes? Would you defy the gale that capsizes your boat on the cold, bitter, heaving loch?”, she asked.

“Yes”, he replied. “Yes, because there is always hope that the flood may be stemmed, the avalanche may be turned, or that the boat may yet come to shore. Yes, because I will not allow my people to be swept away by any force of man or nature, without rising to their defense. It is the obligation of a Chieftain. It is his responsibility and his privilege. My life for theirs. My life for yours, if you ask it.”

Again the Dryad laughed at him, but this time it was a bit softer, as if the trees of the orchard were heavy with blossoms and the leaves clapped more gently to prevent those blossoms from being disturbed. “I have your life already within my hand, Colm Ruadh of the People of Lochside of the Kingdoms of Man. I do not need you to offer it to me, for I am Fey and you are in my haven. I may take your life or leave you with it as I wish.”

She raised her hand to silence the next words from Colm Ruadh. When she knew that he would be silent and allow her to finish, she held her hand up before him, palm upward and slightly cupped. “I have had your life within my hand since you entered my haven yesterday. Those of the Kingdoms of Man who enter my wood with evil intentions toward her or her creatures, do not come out again on the other side. Those who come curious to discover the secrets of her enchantment do not often leave without having discovered that enchantment to be quite dangerous. Those who enter only to pass through or to admire and rejoice in the peace of my haven are never harmed. You were such a one. But I had heard of the great warrior and peace maker, Colm Ruadh. I had not thought such a combination was possible in the Kingdoms of Man, so I had you brought here. I wished to see you.”

She sighed, as with regret, “But now you have come here again, and of your own choice. I am left with a quandary. Do I allow you to return to your people and hope that you will continue to remain silent about what you have seen in my haven, or do I assure that you will tell no one, by enchantment?” She tilted her head slightly to one side, as if looking at him and the problem he presented from another angle might help her to find an answer.

It was Colm Ruadh’s turn to laugh, for he had never heard that the Fey had any regard for the well being of mortal men. He had heard that a Sprite of the woods or of the water, would take a man’s heart, his mind, and his soul without ever a second thought. “I’m not sure how you come to know my name nor all that you seem to know of me, but I’m certain that I would like to at least know your name before you decide how to settle the difficulty I present. Is that possible, Mistress of the Darkling Wood? Will you tell me your name? It cannot make a difference to your decision. If you choose to trust me then trusting me with your name is not a greater risk than trusting me with your secret. If you choose to destroy my mind and all memory of you, then the memory of your name will be destroyed with it. So, how are you called, fair maid of the Fey?”

She stood quite still and looked at him. As still as if she had never moved before nor would she ever move again. Colm thought that he had offended her, so still she was. As he started to speak again, to apologize, for in fact, he had not wanted to hurt her, she laughed again.

“You are a great problem, indeed, and much more dangerous than I had heard, Chieftain of the People of Lochside. For I find I do not want to hurt you. The Kingdoms of Man have few enough who are worthy to lead them. It would not be wise or proper to deprive them of such a leader as you. Go then, but do not come here again thinking that I will not know. If you come again, speak to me as you enter my glade and I will join you. But be aware that I will know that you have entered my wood as soon as you have done so. Such is the binding between the wood and myself.”

“Go now. It grows late outside the wood, and your people will worry about their Chieftain, if you are gone too long. My friend here will guide you through the wood to your horse. I have set a watch upon him so that he would neither stray nor be harmed in your absence.” Colm realized there must have been a look of surprise on his face at that comment, for the Dryad smiled warmly. “Did you not realize how far my vision reaches Chieftain of the People of Lochside? Do not fear. I would not have you or yours harmed, either. Protection is an odd thing, it is not always the weak who need protection, nor always the strong who can give it.”, then she did laugh, a sweet rustling laugh that Colm Ruadh felt very much like joining. The Fey were, at best, unpredictable by all accounts he had ever heard. But, he thought, it might prove to be good to have a friend among the Fey, after all.

Colm reached out and took the Dryad’s hand in his. He looked into eyes that were as green as the forests of Faerie, and said,” My Lady of the Darkling Wood, I thank you for your generosity to one who sought to eavesdrop upon you. I thank you, too, for your invitation to join you again, here in your wood. As bold as it might seem in light of your generosity and patience with me, I would make one more request of you. Please stop calling me Chieftain of the People of Lochside. My name is Malcolm, I am called Colm by my Clan, my kin and my friends. Please do me the courtesy of addressing me as my friend.”

“Colm, Colm Ruadh. It is odd to say the name of a mortal man. It feels strange on my tongue, but I will try to remember.” The Dryad then stepped back into the trunk of the great fir Colm Ruadh had hidden in and disappeared. As Colm turned to leave the glade, the gray wolf at his side, he heard her voice, faintly, from the bows and branches above his head. “It is Rowan. My name is Rowan, Colm Ruadh.”

To Be Continued