The Kilderchern

I know you’ve read a thousand stories about women who have fallen in love with a vampire, with a werewolf, with one of the beautiful Fae. But this is my story, and it doesn’t involve any of the creatures you may have seen in films or read in books, because what he was, and what I am is something else.

Are you ready to listen?

Since the breaking of the first wave, he has existed; a creature of God, but lost and long-forgotten. For years he walked the wilderness alone, and when it happened that people came, they ran from him, not understanding his true nature. And so it was for centuries; he would live and die a thousand times, each time being reborn into a new generation that still feared him.

Now, I need you to put aside what you think know about wicked beasts and creatures of the underworld, and you must not assume that he belonged to the dark. For he was not a creature of the night, but rather one of the dawn, and he did not cower in the shadows. When he was reborn into lands of darkness, his death would come much quicker and he welcomed it, but by the time I was born, into a little village nestled at the bottom of the mountains, he had perfected his way of life.

I had grown up hearing the stories of the Kilderchern, ‘The One that Walks Alone’, and his tales were used to frighten children into submission.

“Now you go to bed! The Kilderchern feasts on children who disobey!”

And off we would run to the safety of our beds and blankets, covers pulled tight around our ears. Oh, how wrong my Grandmother was! For in her ignorance, she did not understand that it was in the light that the Kilderchern needed to be feared the most, for it was in the light that I met him.

Our village was secluded, away from the rest of the people of our land, and because we were small and insular, we all had our roles to play in ensuring the survival of our community. I have the happiest memories of being a child, searching for fallen twigs and sticks as we would laugh and skip and play; our quest for the best, the biggest pile of kindling taking us deep into the forest. But we were not left alone, because as little ones, we were precious to the Elders. We were the next generation and we had the sacred responsibility to keep alive our culture and heritage to pass down again to our children. I smile to think that back then, all those years ago, the idea of immortality might have been seen as a gift, to enable us to pass down our collective knowledge through all of the Ages. But it was not. It was feared, and rightly so, for it does not seem like a gift, now.

It was on such a mission for firewood that my tale truly begins. It was my elder brother’s turn to guard us, as Fion was still childlike despite his age and size, and he couldn’t help the village in many other ways. But he was brave and had a bow, so he was our appointed guardian in the forest. I had wandered away from my friends and was playing in the stream when I saw him. I froze, knowing what he was the instant my eyes fell upon him. Even now, when I close my eyes, I can still picture it; he was bent over the water, washing blood off his hands and body, the carcass of a deer lying at his feet, the scrap of fabric around his waist barely covering limbs that shimmered with pale fur. Red splotches, blood from the deer, covered his lower legs that ended in claw-like talons. His face, scarred but free of hair, looked almost human. The birds had stopped singing, the undergrowth was still.

Kilderchern. The word was a whisper in my mind.

I could not move, I could not scream. My body felt cold and my heart skipped a beat and even my childlike self recognised that there was something about this being that was wrong. He stood to his full height and I took an involuntary step backwards, and when his black eyes met mine, they bored into my soul.

Run, child.

The voice in my head broke my inertia and I obeyed, running past my brother, past my friends, and straight home to my Grandmother. I burst through the door and into her arms as she sat, mending, by the fire. The force of my body rocked her chair as I buried my face in her familiar shoulder.

“I saw him, Gramma! I saw him!” My muffled voice difficult to hear as I hid in her warm embrace.

“Saw who, child? What happened?” My Grandmother looked at me tenderly, pulling my face from her shoulder and wiping the hair from my damp face.

“Him, Gramma! The Kilderchern!

Gramma froze. “What? Where?”

I sniffed. “By the stream. In the woods.”

Gramma looked at me, straight in the eyes, her faded brown meeting my bold blue. “Did he see you, child? Did he see you?”

I paused. I knew, then, that what I said next would be incredibly important. Even as a child, I knew. And I lied.

“No, Gramma. I ran away, back to you,” I said as I wiped my face with the back of my sleeve.

Gramma released the breath she was holding and pulled me back into her arms. “Good, then. That’s good.”

She rocked me back and forth in her chair for a few moments as familiarity calmed my beating heart.

“But why, Gramma? Why would it be bad if he saw me?”

“Because, bearn, the Kilderchern is not like you and me. They say that he is lonely and that out of every generation, he chooses someone, usually a child, to be with him until his next life.”

I pulled away again to look at her weathered face. “Why is he so lonely, Gramma?”

“Because he is the only one of his kind.”

“That’s sad,” I said, leaning back into her warmth. “I feel sorry for him.”

But Gramma didn’t let me relax. “No, bearn. It’s dangerous. He is dangerous. I would not want you taken from me.” She looked at me again, sternly. “Do not go looking for him, do you hear? He is not like us.”

I nodded.

“Will you promise me? Will you promise not to go looking?”

I frowned, not understanding, then, what she was asking. “Yes, Gramma, I promise.” But already, a little niggle of doubt was creeping into my mind. I wasn’t sure that I would be able to keep that promise, because he had seen me, and he had spoken to me, and already, I was being lured in.

Over the next few weeks and months, my fear of the Kilderchern lessened, childhood fears being tricky to keep hold of, and my youth and innocence made the memory of the monster in the woods fade. And then, once I had almost convinced myself it had been a dream and nothing more, it began.

I saw you.

I turned to my brother. “What did you say, Fion?” We sat at the scrubbed pine kitchen table, breaking open pea pods and placing them into the pot for dinner.

“Mmm? Me? Nothing!” Fion frowned.

“Oh, okay.” I returned to my job, knowing that Gramma would be displeased if I didn’t finish in time.

I saw you, and you ran.

The whisper chilled me to the bone. But fear, as it often does when one is young, turned to curiosity.

Is it you? I thought, half wanting to laugh at myself for being so silly. Of course it wasn’t real.

Yes.

The more I responded to the voice, the more it answered, and soon, it knew everything about me. It knew what I liked and what made me laugh, who I counted as a friend, and who had been mean. Over time, as the months and years passed, I stopped talking to the other children, and I ignored my family, for I did not need anyone else. I would wander the forest alone, laughing out loud, trying desperately to find him. At night, he would appear in my dreams and I would run towards him, through the forest, branches whipping my hair and face… but I could never catch him, and he would never look at me. I would wake up screaming in frustration, such was the hold he had on me. 

I didn’t understand, then, that even as I was bound to him, so too, was he bound to me. This strange creature that was the Kilderchern had to be bonded to a human in order to survive, to prolong his life, and without that connection he would die again, to be reborn elsewhere at another time. Through the years of our talking, he had been trying to keep me at a distance, to give me the chance of a normal life, to not claim me until he had to. But I did not know that until, much, much later.

Throughout my childhood and as I grew into womanhood, the villagers began to look at me differently. They were fearful and knowing; my lie to Gramma becoming clearer with every passing season. I was claimed by the Kilderchern, and they knew that I was his, but nobody could bring themselves to say it out loud. It took me many, many years to move past the feeling of betrayal, that the villagers knew what was happening to me and yet no one stepped in to try and break the hold he had on a child of the village. I was left to face the Kilderchern alone and the bitterness of this thought stayed with me for a long, long time.

It was the night before my seventeenth summer that everything finally changed. He found me in my dreams and was in the clearing as always, but this time, he did not run from me. He stood, still and quiet, and for the first time since our meeting at the stream, I looked at him.

“It’s time,” he said, softly, standing tall, his hunched spine straightening. Now you must remember that the voice I had heard in my head since childhood had been disembodied, so it had been easy for me to forget what the Kilderchern looked like. The voice had such warmth and humour that I had created an image of him that was entirely human. In my imagination, he was handsome, a prince, a rescuer, someone that I could love, someone I did love. But now, for the first time, I was faced with the reality of the body that was attached to the voice and I faltered. And I was afraid.

“I know,” I whispered, nervously.

“Will you come?” He looked almost unsure, his too-large eyes fixed upon mine, his clawed and calloused hands clasped in front of his pale and pelted torso. Could I imagine him touching me with those hands? I shuddered.

“Yes.” I couldn’t help myself. For what was the alternative? Refuse and then go back to my life and things continue as they were? Or would he leave and then I would be left with the vast emptiness of where he used to be?

“We will need to move on,” he said, a slight tremor in his voice, as if he was unsure I would go with him. "I cannot linger here much longer.”

I nodded once, and the feeling I had when I was sat on my Gramma’s lap returned. He’s lonely. He needs me.

“You can say ‘no’, belufan, my beloved. I can leave this place alone.”

The terror of losing him was an ice-cold shard in my heart. “No! I will come! I… I want to come.”

He smiled, small sharp teeth in pink gums. “Then, belufan, wake up.”