The Geis of Muirín
Some tales do not wait for song —
they bind the teller as surely as the told. This is the beginning of Cael’s binding, a warrior’s vow beneath the tide-moon, where a ribbon and a whisper became a chain stronger than steel.
The Geis of Muirín, Part I
They say Cael died at the standing stone, but oaths can live longer than men. I tell you now of the night a voice rose from the ash, and a promise that should have been forgotten called the living to its side.
The scent of salt wrapped around Cael as he followed the ragged southern coastline of Mórradún. The air had changed—thicker now, humming low in his bones like a distant whale song. Waves no longer crashed but whispered, drawing back like breath held too long.
Kelp clung to the rocks like curling fingers. Beneath his boots, the stones gleamed slick and pale, as if lit from somewhere beneath. The pull was unmistakable.
They said Tír fo Thuiunn began where the world frayed—where the land forgot itself and the sea remembered. The Merrow were part of that remembering. Sailors told of voices in the mist, eyes beneath the waves. Some returned not as they were. Some did not return at all.
The Medallion of the Fianna pressed against his chest, heavy and mute. It had not stirred in weeks.
He couldn’t remember the last time it had. Or the last time he had.
Far beyond the tideline, something sleek and dark slid beneath the surface before vanishing into the gloom. The water stilled as if nothing had been there at all.
Below, the sea sang—not a warrior’s roar, but a high, brittle music, like silver wire strung taut beneath the surf. It was the sound of promises drowned and never found again.
Most would have missed it or dismissed it as gull-cry or breeze. Cael had spent too long skirting the wild’s threshold. He knew when the veil began to thin.
Cael stood at the edge of the rocks, the medallion cool beneath his palm. Once, it had burned with purpose. Maybe the Fianna’s oaths, like their shieldmaster, had faded too far.
Now he walked the salt-roads like a ghost in his own time, listening for echoes of something the world hadn’t yet lost. Something the medallion might still remember.
Maybe the medallion had nothing left to say. Or maybe it waited for him to become someone worth answering.
The sea had not yet forgotten its old names.
Then he saw her, just beyond the spray.
She stood on a dark rock jutting from the foam, bare feet steady where the tide licked and hissed. Her hair clung to her shoulders in wet ropes, seafoam tangled like ribbons through strands the color of storm-tossed kelp. The last light caught her face—half in shadow, half aglow in green and gold. She looked up at him as though she had been waiting.
No spell there. No silver-lit glamour. Just eyes steady enough to pin him where he stood.
“Muirín,” she said, her voice the pull of a tide against stone.
The name fell like a net—soft, deliberate, inescapable.
Cael didn’t answer. The medallion at his chest gave no answer either.
The tide rose between them.
“You carry something old,” she said, stepping down into the shallows without breaking his gaze. “Older than kings. Older than the bones of Mórradún. It must be heavy… to bear what the world keeps forgetting.”
He touched the medallion. “I carry what’s left.”
“Do you?” Her tone tilted, almost playful, though the words struck like oiled flint. “Some say the Fianna are broken—scattered like foam on the tide. Others say they were never more than songs told to warm a tavern. Which are you, Cael? The ghost of a ballad… or the part of the story that still draws breath?”
He didn’t answer.
She let the silence stretch, then nodded toward the water. “The kelpies press in from the northern deeps. Three villages already cut off. Elders vanish. Children disappear. We send no warriors. If they breach this line, the tide-walls will fall, and the land will remember only blood.”
Cael narrowed his eyes. “Why wait?”
“Because the sea must never draw first blood,” she said, crouching by a shallow pool where silver fish flashed among the kelp. “We remember what war does to the world. And perhaps…” her gaze slid up to meet his, “…we remember who begins it.”
“And yet you ask for help.”
“Not yet,” she replied, rising. Moonlight clung to her hair, scattering droplets like stars. “I only tell you what is true. You’ve heard it now, and the truth is a weight. Some men set it down. Others carry it until it shapes their spine.”
Cael folded his arms. “You throw your net wide.”
“Do I?” She stepped closer, tilting her head as if measuring him. “You don’t fear storms, Cael of the Fianna. But tell me—when the wind turns against you, do you bend with it… or do you force the wind to change?”
“We hold the line,” he said. “Or we fall with it.”
“Then perhaps,” she said, voice low and certain, “my people need someone who remembers how to stand when the tide wants you on your knees.”
Her eyes held him—no spell, no glamour, only the hush before a vow. Not asking him to fight. Not yet. Asking him to care.
“When we bind ourselves to a promise,” she said, leading him deeper into the shallows, “we do not give it to the wind. The wind forgets. We give it to the tide—so it will be remembered.”
She turned to face him, the water swirling around her calves. “Our king will not act, and my kin vanish in the dark. We are a people of memory and foam, and foam does not hold the line against the deep. When danger comes, we trust those who walk the land to stand with us. But the land forgets the sea far more easily than the sea forgets the land.”
Her gaze locked on his. “I ask because I believe you are not one who forgets. And men who do not forget… are dangerous to lose.”
Cael’s jaw tightened.
“I ask this not for my people alone,” she continued. “I ask because I believe you are still what the world once trusted—and perhaps what it might trust again, if given the chance.”
He said nothing.
She glanced at the medallion. “It knows truth from vanity. Will you let it stay silent? Or will you let it speak for you?”
His voice was low. “What do you ask of me?”
“That you swear to stand with us against any who would break our waters or steal our kin. By land or sea. For as long as the tides turn and the moon calls the waves.”
She stepped close enough that he caught the faint perfume of kelp in her hair. The tide brushed the edge of his cloak. She lifted his hand, placing it on the tide-worn stone.
“The moon will turn tomorrow. When it does, the kelpies will take the third road. Then the tide-walls will break, and the land will remember only blood. If you stand with us now, the tide will remember your vow. If you do nothing, the sea will remember your silence— and so will we.”
“It must be given freely,” she whispered.
Cael’s fingers curled against the cold stone, the medallion heavy at his chest. “You ask for more than you say.”
“I ask for no more than you are,” she said.
He looked out at the horizon. Oaths, like storms, did not break on their own. They were broken by those who swore them.
And still she waited.
Cael let out a slow breath, the salt sharp on his tongue. For a moment, he saw his reflection rippling in the waves—not as he was, but as he had been. Whole. Unbroken.
The medallion warmed beneath his cloak.
“I swear it,” he said. “By this sea, by this stone, by the name the bards have nearly forgotten—I will stand for the merrow.”
The tide rose in stillness, swallowing the words. The medallion pulsed once, steady and low, as if the sea marked his vow.
(A bard’s aside…) “The Chronicle remembers. If this tale stirs your heart, cast $5 into the fire — buy the bard a pint to keep the song alive.”
Cael reached the small coastal village of An Clachan Salach—the Dirty Harbor—its name said in the old way, On CLAH-khun SAH-lukh—just before dawn. The tavern was still lit, a hazy beacon of warmth and noise in the cold, salt-whipped air. Inside, he found a corner table and ordered a mead, the unfamiliar weight of his oath a new kind of silence in his heart.
He’d been there an hour, half-listening to grumbles about empty nets, when a shadow fell across his table.
An old man stood there, red cloak drawn close. Odd in this heat. His face was the color and texture of worn leather, his eyes bright as tidewater at dawn.
“That’s a heavy thing you carry,” he said, nodding at Cael’s chest. “The Fianna’s mark. It’s been years since I’ve seen one.”
Cael’s hand found the medallion, a reflex. “It’s an old story.”
“All stories are old, friend. Some are just worth remembering.” He sat without asking, the cloak folding around him like blood on water.
“The bards sing of glorious battles… and of a shieldmaster meant for greater things.”
Cael’s pulse shifted. “Bards sing what they will.”
The man leaned in, voice lowering. “They sing of Cael the Forgotten. But that’s not truth, is it? A hero is never forgotten. He is only… unappreciated.”
Cael didn’t answer. The medallion was still warm. The old man smiled.
The tavern door banged open, letting in a gust of salt wind and a fisherman with a face white as ash. His voice was thin, and the room stilled to hear him.
“Happened in the grey hour before dawn,” he said, breathless. “A kelpie took her. Slipped into the tide and gone. They say she was one of the sea folk—came ashore to trade shell and pearl for bread. Didn’t make it back.”
Cael’s grip tightened around his cup. They had not said her name. But the words wrapped around his ribs all the same. A woman of the waves. Taken. The tide’s song from that night with Muirín came back to him, sharper now, threaded with fear.
The red-cloaked man at Cael’s table leaned back in the shadows, turning a small knife between long fingers. His voice was smooth as he spoke.
“A shame,” his words pitched for Cael alone. “The sea folk are so delicate, they put their faith in a king too weak to act, and it is the people who pay the price.”
Cael kept his gaze on the fire, but the words slid in like water under a door. The medallion at his neck flared with a heat he had not felt before.
Cael’s jaw ached. “You don’t know the merrow.”
A faint chuckle. “I know weakness when I see it. They’ll never hold the line, Cael of the Fianna. you—” the man leaned forward, letting the knife’s point rest against the table “—were born for grander battles. You should be leading armies, not wasting your strength on those who cannot defend themselves.”
Cael looked at him then, and the man’s eyes were deep and bright, reflecting the firelight like coals buried in ash.
“Perhaps you’ve already realized it,” the man said softly. “Your promise to the girl of the waves—it was noble. But noble men deserve more than to drown in someone else’s tide. Don’t you think?”
Muirín’s face rose in his mind—not the moment she’d asked for his oath, but the moment she’d looked at him as though she already knew he would give it. And beneath it, another thought stirred: She is mine to protect.
The man in the red cloak smiled, as though hearing it.
“Protect her, yes. But in your way, Cael. Not in the way of her people.”
The knife spun once more between his fingers, and then the man was gone, leaving only the echo of his voice—and the taste of salt that was not the sea.
The wind off the southern coast cut sharper than it had the night he met her. The tide was higher, the rocks slick with foam, the air thick with the scent of torn weed.
Cael followed the curve of the bay to the place where the fishermen kept their boats. The shingle crunched under his boots, littered with splintered oars and coils of rope frayed white. One hull lay half-submerged, cracked down the middle as if some great hand had snapped it like kindling.
He crouched, fingers brushing a net tangled in the rocks. The cords were shredded, the cuts too clean for weather or rock. Something had pulled with purpose. Something that knew the sea better than men.
No bodies. No blood. The tide had taken everything but the signs.
He moved toward the waterline, scanning the waves for a shadow, a shape, any hint of the kelpies. Nothing stirred but the grey backs of the swells and the wheeling of gulls overhead.
A length of kelp lay draped across a jag of stone. Not unusual, not here—except for the strip of sea-woven ribbon knotted in its fronds. Green and gold, the colors of the shift she’d worn that night. He took it in his hand. Salt stung his eyes before the wind did.
He waited, but the sea gave up no secrets—no enemy, no sign of her.
The medallion at his chest was silent, heavy. He could feel the oath in its weight, pressing harder for the lack of anything to do.
By the time he turned back toward the village, the frustration had settled deeper than the cold in his bones. He stood in the empty road, the ribbon damp in his palm—a warrior ready for battle, bound to an enemy he could not see, and to a people who would not call him to fight.
The echo of the man in the red cloak’s words cut like a strike from an opponent’s blade.
In the stillness that followed, the medallion’s voice was absent.
Until then, a pint ($5) keeps the medallion’s glow alive, the bard’s throat unbroken, and your name remembered in the Chronicle.