Bay’s Story Time – The Druid Queen

Here’s part two of the legends of the Druid Princess, where her story truly begins. Travel with us back to Old Ireland and the time of Magick and of kings and queens, before busy cities of cars and skyscrapers, before modern technology took hold.

The Druid Queen and the Prince

Back to the legends of the Druids, we go. Have you heard of Sorcha the Light Bringer? Sorcha was a Druid princess, her castle on the Isle of Skye still stands to this day, a safe haven for women with the sense even now.
Her story begins with a woman of druid blood who married into the royal family in attempt to bring the two worlds together.
She was a soul healer, you see, and she suspected that bringing her kind into the royal court might ease the tension, allow her people to stop hiding in the shadows. She was very wrong.
She fell for the crown prince and she bound herself to him as a soul healer can. In time, he began to use her for the fact that her sense could tell her if others had it as well. One family of mind soothers were entirely wiped out, all put to death by her prince. One family fled into hiding outside of Ireland to avoid the same fate. And the third disappeared entirely for a time.
Not long after, the Druid queen gave birth to a daughter. She was named Sorcha, for she was the light in her mother’s life. However, the painful truth still remained that she was powerful in her gift even as a young child and she was by nature female, which meant she was not the heir the crown prince expected of his wife.
When the sense became so rare and hard to find anymore, the prince banished his wife and her young daughter from the castle, deciding she was no use to him if she could not help any longer, but unable to sentence to death the woman who had stood by him for so long. He would marry again, this time to a woman who could produce him heirs.
Our soul healer could never go back to her druid people. They would never have allowed her back in their midst for what she had done under the prince’s rule. For fear he was following her to their safe havens, intending to end them.
So one night, she wrapped her baby daughter in fabric and brought her to a village where she knew some with the sense would be. She gave her daughter to them and then, alone that night, she broke her gift.
Sorcha was taken back to Skye by the Druid women and raised there as the princess she was, the Druid elders teaching her their ways and beliefs. When she was old enough, the wisest of the soul healers would teach her how to make use of her gift and when to do so, she would go with them on their journeys to the villages to aid the bond weavers, though the mind soothers had all but vanished.
There was one village, when the Druid Princess was about twelve years of age, where an older woman lived on the outskirts. She was allowed to live there out of the kindness of the villagers’ hearts, her secret kept from anyone who came looking.
But Sorcha could feel it, whenever she was within reach of the woman. Pain so great, it nearly sent the princess to her knees, though her gift pulled her toward the woman each time they met in passing.
One day, the Druid princess decided it had been enough. She came in contact with the woman at the market, while buying herbs for one of the village healers whose patient was being helped by the soul healer and bond weaver she traveled with. This time, she didn’t simply let the woman leave after a few seconds.
”Don’t!” the woman’s voice was a hoarse whisper as she pulled her hand out of Sorcha’s reach, “Don’t touch me. You’ll not help, only hurt yourself.”
”If you know what I am, you know I can help,” Sorcha’s answer was quiet, “So why won’t you allow me to?”
”I was a soul healer,” The woman told the princess, taking a breath, “I lost everything. My love betrayed me and I had to give up my child to the druids for her safety. I broke my gift all those years ago so that it couldn’t be used against me any longer. If you try to heal my soul, it will only break yours.”
”A soul destroyer,” The words would fall into the quiet of the morning as the princess realized with whom she was dealing, her hand tightening on the basket she held. But what had startled her wasn’t the idea of a soul destroyer. It was the realization that this woman’s story aligned with what the druids had told her of her mother.
Every time they visited the village from then on, Sorcha would look for the old woman, love for her mother still held inside her soul even after the years she had spent with the druids and the tales she had heard of her mother’s gift being used to find and end the gifts of old Ireland.