The Race I Shouldn't Have Won

My husband killed me with his mouth.

Not literally. I'm still here, obviously, telling you this story. But the woman I was before that day at the king's fair? She died on the racetrack, somewhere between the starting line and the place where I collapsed and split in two.

Let me back up. This story doesn't make sense without the beginning, and the beginning is where I made my first mistake: I fell in love with a human man.

---

His name was Crunnchu. He was a farmer, a widower with a decent bit of land and four sons who needed a mother and a farmhouse that needed a woman's touch. I found him the way I found most things in those days: by wandering.

I was between lives, I suppose you could say. I'd been a goddess once, or something close to it. I'd been a queen. I'd been a warrior, a lover, a mother, a dozen different versions of myself scattered across centuries like seeds thrown to the wind. But that was before. That was when I still had power, still had purpose, still had the kind of existence that made sense.

By the time I wandered onto Crunnchu's farm, I was just tired. Tired of being extraordinary. Tired of the weight that came with it. I wanted to be small for a while. I wanted to cook meals and tend gardens and fall asleep next to someone warm without worrying about prophecies or battles or the fate of nations.

Crunnchu didn't know what I was. He just saw a woman walking up his path one evening, dark-haired, strong-limbed, appearing out of nowhere like the answer to a prayer he hadn't known he was praying.

"Are you lost?" he asked.

"Probably," I said. "Do you have food?"

He did. He also had ale, and a fire, and a loneliness so vast I could feel it from across the room. His wife had been dead three years. His sons were growing wild without a mother. The kitchen was a disaster. The younger two wore the same tunic every day, and the older two had taken to settling arguments with their fists because nobody was around to tell them to use their words.

I walked into his house like I belonged there, and within a week, I did.

---

I should explain something about being whatever I am.

I'm not a goddess in the way humans imagine goddesses, all shining and perfect, floating around on clouds dispensing blessings. I'm more like a force that sometimes wears a woman's shape. I can run faster than horses. I can see things that haven't happened yet. I can do things that would make ordinary people's heads spin.

But I can also bleed. I can hurt. I can love, which is the most dangerous ability of all.

When I moved into Crunnchu's farmhouse, I put all of that away. Packed it up like winter clothes in summer, shoved it into a corner of myself and ignored it. I wanted to be ordinary. I wanted to be a farmer's wife, with farmer's wife problems, living a farmer's wife life.

For three years, I almost managed it.

I cooked. I cleaned. I raised his sons like they were mine. Taught them to read, taught them to fight, taught them to treat women like people instead of property. I lay with Crunnchu at night and listened to his snoring and felt something embarrassingly close to contentment.

The youngest, Cian, had a habit of bringing me dead things he found in the fields and presenting them with great ceremony, as if he were offering treasure. A crow with a broken neck. A mouse the cat had gotten. Once, an entire badger. He'd hold the thing out with both hands, beaming, and I'd accept it with the grave solemnity it apparently required and figure out how to get rid of it later.

The oldest, Finnian, was already wise enough at nineteen to suspect I wasn't entirely what I seemed. He never asked. He just watched me with those careful eyes when he thought I wasn't looking, and kept his observations to himself. Smart boy. I liked him best, though I tried not to show it.

I even got pregnant. Twice.

The first time, I lost it early. Just a flutter of possibility, gone before it had properly begun. The second time stuck. By the time Crunnchu decided to go to the king's fair, I was eight months along and shaped like a boulder with legs.

"You should stay home," I told him. "The fair is three days away. What if the baby comes early?"

"The baby won't come early. Babies come when they come."

"Yes, and sometimes when they come is inconvenient. Crunnchu, I'm serious. Don't go."

But he wanted to go. The king's fair was the social event of the season. Horse races, feasting, contests of strength, all the things that made men feel like men. He'd missed the last two years because of harvest timing, and he wanted to see his friends and drink too much and be part of something larger than our quiet little farm.

"I'll be fine," he said. "You'll be fine. Everything will be fine."

Famous last words.

---

Here's what you need to understand about Crunnchu: he wasn't a bad man. He wasn't cruel or selfish or any of the things that make a husband easy to hate. He was just ordinary. Limited in the way that ordinary people are limited, unable to imagine consequences beyond the immediate moment, unable to see how his choices might ripple outward and drown someone else.

He loved me. I believe that. He loved me the way a man loves a warm fire or a good meal. Comfortably, contentedly, without ever really wondering where the warmth came from or what it cost to provide.

I should have told him what I was. I know that now. I should have sat him down on our very first night and said: listen, I'm not exactly human, I can do things you wouldn't believe, and you need to understand that this isn't information to be shared with anyone, ever, under any circumstances.

But I didn't tell him. Because I wanted to be ordinary. Because I thought if I pretended hard enough, it would become true.

So stupid.

---

The fair was three days away, which meant Crunnchu was gone for nearly a week. The travel there, the days of festivities, the travel back. I spent the time doing what pregnant women do: waddling around the farm, napping more than I wanted to, having increasingly urgent conversations with my bladder.

The boys helped. They were good boys, thirteen, fifteen, seventeen, and nineteen, and they treated me like their real mother by then, which meant they were alternately wonderful and impossible.

"Ma, should you be lifting that?" "Ma, do you want me to milk the cow for you?" "Ma, your ankles look swollen, are you sure you shouldn't sit down?"

I loved them. I was also ready to throw things at them by the fifth day. Cian brought me another dead bird with the air of a man presenting diamonds, and I seriously considered eating it raw just to see what he'd do.

Crunnchu came home on the evening of the seventh day. I heard the cart coming up the path and went out to meet him, expecting the usual routine. Help him unload, hear about his adventures, pretend to be interested in which horses had won and which men had drunk themselves unconscious.

But when I saw his face, I knew something was wrong.

---

"What did you do?" I asked.

He was pale. Sweating, despite the cool evening air. His hands were shaking as he climbed down from the cart.

"It wasn't my fault," he said.

"What wasn't your fault?"

"I was drunk. Everyone was drunk. We were watching the king's horses race, and they were fast, really fast, and everyone was saying how nothing could beat the king's horses, how they were the finest in all of Ulster, and I just..."

"You just what?"

"I said my wife could beat them."

I stared at him. The words didn't make sense at first. They just hung there in the air between us, meaningless sounds arranged in a meaningless order.

"You said what?"

"I said my wife could run faster than the king's horses. I was bragging, I didn't mean it, I didn't think—"

"You told the king of Ulster that I could outrun his horses?"

"It just slipped out! And then everyone laughed, and the king got angry, and he said—" Crunnchu stopped. Swallowed. "He said I had to prove it or be put to death for insulting his horses."

"So you chose my life over yours."

"I chose both! If you race and win, we both live. If you win, we're heroes. Macha, please, you're fast, I've seen you run, you can do this—"

"I'm eight months pregnant!" The words came out as a scream. I hadn't meant to scream, but there it was, echoing across the farmyard, scattering the chickens. "I am growing an entire human being inside my body, and you volunteered me to race horses because you couldn't keep your stupid mouth shut?"

"Macha—"

"When?"

"What?"

"When is this race happening? When does the king expect me to show up and save your worthless hide?"

Crunnchu wouldn't meet my eyes. "Tomorrow."

---

I didn't sleep that night. I sat by the fire, one hand on my belly, feeling the baby move inside me and trying to figure a way out of this that didn't end with someone dead.

Option one: don't show up. Let the king execute Crunnchu for his boast. Raise the boys alone, have the baby alone, live out my days as a widow.

I thought about it longer than I should have. Is that terrible? Probably. But Crunnchu had done this to himself. He'd traded my safety for a moment of pride at a drinking table, and part of me thought he deserved whatever consequences came from that.

But the boys didn't deserve it. They'd already lost one mother. They didn't need to watch their father die because of a stupid bet. And the baby deserved a father, even a flawed one.

Option two: show up. Race the horses. Win.

I could do it. Even pregnant, I was faster than anything on four legs. I was made of speed. It was one of the things I'd put away when I came to live as a farmer's wife, but it was still there, coiled inside me, waiting to be used.

But at what cost? I was eight months along. The baby was heavy, pressing down on everything, making even walking uncomfortable. Running, really running, the kind of running that would beat the king's horses, might break something that couldn't be fixed.

I sat there all night, weighing lives against each other like coins on a scale. My husband's life. My baby's life. My own life. The life I'd built, the ordinary existence I'd wanted so badly.

By dawn, I'd made my decision.

---

The king's fair was held on a great flat plain outside his fortress. By the time I arrived, in Crunnchu's cart because I certainly wasn't walking three days in my condition, the field was already packed with spectators.

They stared as I climbed down from the cart. I couldn't blame them. I was quite a sight. Hugely pregnant, hair wild from the journey, eyes red from lack of sleep. Not exactly the image of a champion racer.

"That's her?" I heard someone say. "That's the woman who's supposed to beat the king's horses?"

"She looks ready to pop. This is going to be over fast."

"Twenty silver she doesn't make it to the halfway point."

I ignored them. I'd been underestimated before. I'd spent most of my existence being underestimated. It stopped bothering me around the third century.

The king was waiting on a raised platform at the edge of the racing ground. He was a big man, thick-necked and red-faced, wearing the kind of gold jewelry that screams "I have more money than taste." His horses stood nearby, two magnificent creatures, black as midnight, muscles rippling under their glossy coats.

They were fast. I could see it in the way they moved, the way they held their heads. They were probably the fastest horses in Ulster, maybe the fastest in all of Ireland.

They weren't faster than me.

"So this is the woman," the king said, looking me up and down. "Your husband claims you can outrun my horses."

"My husband says many things when he's been drinking."

The king laughed. It was not a kind laugh. "Are you saying he lied?"

"I'm saying he spoke without thinking. Which, as I understand it, is a thing that happens often at your fair."

The crowd murmured. I probably shouldn't have been quite so sharp with the man who held my husband's life in his hands, but I was tired and pregnant and not in the mood for pleasantries.

"The race will proceed," the king said. "You will run against my horses. If you win, your husband goes free and you'll both be rewarded with gold and honor. If you lose—"

"If I lose, you'll kill him. Yes, I gathered that." I put a hand on my belly. The baby kicked, hard enough to make me wince. "I'm asking you to postpone. I'm asking for a few weeks, until the child is born. Then I'll race your horses gladly."

"You're asking me to wait?"

"I'm asking for mercy. I'm asking you to look at me and see that I am in no condition to run anywhere. I'm asking you to be a king instead of a bully."

The crowd went silent. I'd gone too far. I knew it even as the words left my mouth. But I was tired of being polite to men who didn't deserve it. Tired of pretending I was less than I was to make them comfortable.

The king's face darkened. "You dare speak to me like that?"

"I dare ask for basic human decency. Apparently that's too much for the king of Ulster."

"Run the race," he said, his voice cold. "Run it now, or watch your husband die."

---

They brought Crunnchu to the edge of the field. Two guards held him, one on each arm, a sword at his throat. He looked at me with eyes full of guilt and terror and something else. Hope, maybe. Hope that I could fix what he'd broken.

I looked at my husband. I looked at the king. I looked at the horses, stamping impatiently, ready to run.

And then I looked at the crowd. Hundreds of men. Lords and warriors and farmers and merchants, all gathered to watch a pregnant woman race for her husband's life. Some of them were laughing. Some of them were placing bets. None of them were doing anything to stop this.

Fine, I thought. You want to see what I can do? I'll show you.

"Clear the field," I said.

---

The race was two laps around the plain. The horses would have a rider each. I would run alone. The king himself would drop the starting flag.

I walked to the starting line. The horses snorted and pawed at the ground, sensing something. Sensing me, maybe, the wrongness of me, the thing I'd kept hidden for three years. Animals always know.

The baby shifted inside me. A contraction rippled across my belly, just a warning, my body telling me this was a terrible idea. I breathed through it.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" one of the riders asked. He was young, barely more than a boy, and his face was pale. "You're... I mean, you're very..."

"Pregnant? Yes, I'd noticed." I looked at him. "What's your name?"

"Brendan."

"Brendan, I'm going to give you some advice. When this is over, whatever happens, remember that you were just following orders. The guilt belongs to the man who gave them, not the boy who carried them out. Can you do that?"

He nodded, confused.

"Good. Now let's race."

---

The flag dropped.

I ran.

I've tried to describe what it feels like, running like that. Not human running but the other thing, the speed that's in my blood, the gift that makes me what I am. I've never found the right words. It's not like flying, though it's close. It's more like becoming wind. Becoming motion itself, with no body to slow you down, no limits to hold you back.

The horses fell behind before we'd gone a hundred yards. I could hear them behind me, their hooves thundering, the riders shouting, but the sounds were distant, irrelevant. I was running, and nothing could catch me. Not horses, not men, not the consequences of my husband's stupid pride.

I finished the first lap so far ahead of the horses that the crowd had stopped cheering. They just stared, silent, watching something they couldn't explain.

The second lap was harder.

My body remembered what it was supposed to be doing. Growing a baby, preparing for birth, conserving energy for the enormous task ahead. It didn't appreciate being asked to run faster than horses while eight months pregnant. Halfway through the second lap, I felt something tear. Not physically. Or not just physically. Something deeper. Something that connected me to the life I'd been living, the ordinary existence I'd tried to build.

I kept running.

Another contraction hit. This one was serious, a wave of pain that nearly took my legs out from under me. The baby was coming. The baby was coming now, because my body had decided that if I was going to abuse it like this, it was going to make me deal with the consequences immediately.

I kept running.

The finish line was ahead. The horses were somewhere behind me, irrelevant, forgotten. The crowd was screaming. Cheering, maybe, or just screaming because they didn't know what else to do. The king was on his platform, his face a mask of disbelief and rage.

I crossed the finish line.

And then I collapsed.

---

The babies, twins it turned out, a boy and a girl, were born right there on the racing ground, in front of everyone. I don't remember most of it. I remember pain, and blood, and someone pressing a cloth to my forehead, and then two small cries that meant my children were alive even if I wasn't sure about myself.

When I could finally sit up, finally think, finally look around at what had happened, the first thing I saw was the king.

He was standing a few feet away, staring at me like I was something that had crawled out of the sea. Maybe I was. Maybe that's what I'd been all along, and I'd just been pretending otherwise.

"What are you?" he said.

"I'm a woman who asked for mercy and didn't get it." My voice came out raw, scraped thin by screaming. "I'm a mother who raced for her husband's life while her children were being born. And I'm the thing you made when you chose cruelty over basic decency."

"I didn't know—"

"You didn't care." I got to my feet. It took everything I had. My body was wrecked, emptied out, held together by nothing but rage. "None of you cared. You watched a pregnant woman beg for a few weeks' delay, and you laughed, and you placed bets, and you did nothing."

The crowd was silent now. Some of them had the grace to look ashamed. Most of them just looked scared.

"So here is something to remember this day by," I said. "A gift that will last for generations."

I raised my arms. The power I'd put away, the power I'd tried so hard to forget, came roaring back, filling me up, spilling out of me like light.

"From this moment forward, and for nine generations to come, whenever the men of Ulster face their greatest need, whenever enemies threaten and battle looms and you need your strength the most, you will feel what I felt today. You will feel the pain of childbirth. You will be helpless, weak, unable to fight, for five days and four nights."

The king's face went white. "You can't—"

"I can. I just did." I looked at every man in that crowd, every warrior and lord and farmer who had watched and done nothing. "Remember this, the next time you think a woman's pain is entertainment."

I picked up my children, my twins, still bloody, still crying, and I walked away.

---

I didn't go back to Crunnchu's farm.

I know that seems cruel. He was still alive. I'd won the race, fulfilled my end of the bargain. The king had to let him go, had to keep his word in front of all those witnesses.

But I couldn't go back to him. I couldn't lie next to the man who had done this to me and act like everything was fine. He'd almost killed me. He'd almost killed our children. And he'd done it because he couldn't keep his mouth shut at a party.

I went into the hills instead. Found a cave, a place to heal, a place to nurse my twins and recover from the wreckage of my body. The boys found me eventually. They brought food and blankets and news of their father, who was apparently devastated, apparently sorry, apparently begging anyone who would listen to help him find his wife.

"He wants you to come home," the oldest one said. Finnian. Nineteen years old and already wise enough to look uncomfortable saying it.

"I'm sure he does."

"He says he didn't know. He says if he'd known what would happen—"

"He knew I was pregnant. He knew the king wasn't going to postpone. He chose to gamble with my life because he didn't want to die." I shifted one of the babies to my other breast. "That's knowing enough."

Finnian was quiet for a moment. "Are you going to curse him too?"

"No. I've done enough cursing for one lifetime." I looked at him, this boy who'd become my son, who'd lost one mother and was now losing another. "Take care of your brothers. Take care of the farm. I'll send word when I'm ready to see you again."

"And father?"

"Tell him I'm alive. Tell him the children are healthy. Tell him—" I stopped, searching for words that were true without being kind. "Tell him I hope he learned something."

---

The curse held. For nine generations, the men of Ulster fell into labor pains whenever they faced their greatest battles. Their enemies learned to time their attacks. Their warriors learned to dread the weakness that came upon them without warning.

I watched from a distance. I'd gone back to being whatever I was before. Not a goddess exactly, but not a woman either. Something in between. Something that wandered.

The twins grew up in the hills, raised by me and by the family I gathered around us. Other women, mostly. Other outcasts, other people who didn't fit into the world as men had arranged it. When they were old enough, they went out into that world and made their own choices.

My son became a warrior, because of course he did. My daughter became a healer. Both of them carried pieces of me. The speed, the power, the rage that could reshape reality when pushed too far.

I like to think they also carried my love. I like to think they knew, underneath everything, that I wanted them. That I fought for them. That I would have died for them if dying had been required.

Running, as it turned out, was enough.