Ellen Delaney sunk the last spoke into the soft earth, then worked her way around the tent’s circumference, tying off the stakes and giving it a good shake, making every effort to see that it would stand whatever curse might befall a lone soul under the solstice moon. It had been some years since she’d gone camping, but she could still pitch a tent. When it was solid she counted off ten paces to the hawthorn tree. At the height of bloom, its gorgeous white flowers were a stark contradiction to the mythology embedded deeply into the gnarled tree, right down to its tangled roots. Just beyond it, popping out of the grass, like an image in 3-D, one could see a distinct ring, which from above would look like a giant O. A fairy tree and a fairy ring.
The ring in the grass was made up of wild mushrooms, yet like the tree, the circle was endowed by some—mostly the older folks in this village—with mythological properties, and it came with dire warnings. It was the domain of fairies. Cunning, playful, and vindictive creatures who could bestow riches with one hand while striking them down with the other. The tales of their mirth and feisty deeds were as long and dark as the Irish night sky.
Nonsense, of course, and it would soon be put to rest. And it wasn’t as if anyone was asking for them to be taken down. Live and let live, leave well enough alone. She and her grown daughter had recently moved to Ballysiogdun, and their stone cottage, visible in the distance, was said to be in the middle of a fairy path. Typical that no one deemed to mention it until after they’d moved in. It was true that on the other side of the cottage, if one continued in a straight path, one would soon come upon another fairy tree, and another fairy ring, placing her cottage squarely in jeopardy. Structures built in the middle of fairy paths did not bode well. And apparently, the fairies wanted it gone.
Rubbish. If the cottage posed such a danger, then why hadn’t the councilman ordered it bulldozed before she and her daughter moved in? This was Aiden Cunningham’s fight, not theirs. He was a coward, that’s why, already bending from the backlash of the villagers. Perhaps one villager in particular.
If the villagers wanted to point the finger at someone, it should be each other. With their lies, and cheats, and schemes. Maybe she should start outing their secrets, let them have a go at each other. If there was one thing Ellen Delaney had learned, it was that a woman her age was often completely overlooked. Perhaps a more delicate type would be hurt by this fact, this surreal invisibility. But it had served Ellen well. She knew so many dirty little secrets, and she wasn’t afraid to expose them. If tonight didn’t do the trick, she was going to do exactly that.
Sinners were calling for the destruction of her home, not fairies, or shape-shifters, or piseog, one of the many Irish words that referred to the supernatural. Such tales belonged in the pages of a book. Ellen groaned at the thought of the professor’s book. Dylan Kelly. He was also behind this. Riling everyone up with the promise of wild tales. Enough. She didn’t want to think about them anymore. Ellen Delaney dove into the tent and rifled through her bag for her bottle of Powers whiskey. This nonsense would end tonight. She had made a bet. In her quieter moments, she called it a “Deal with the Devil,” but she would see to it that the terms were honored. As she sipped on the whiskey and looked out over the soft green hills, kissed by the lingering sun, the conversation played in her mind, like background music:
“If you’re so sure fairies don’t exist, spend the night near the fairy ring. ”
“I will, so.”
“Sundown to sunrise.”
“Not a bother.”
“Alone.”
“If I do, what’s in it for me?”
They opened the calendar to study the cycles of the moon. The twenty-first of June, the summer solstice. Ellen’s daughter was leaving for a conference in Dublin just at the right time. Ellen had no intention of forcing Jane to camp overnight with her; she wasn’t built for it. Legally blind, her daughter startled easily. With Jane gone, it was the perfect weekend to do it. She said as much, and the next thing she knew the date was set. Friday evening, sundown. An official agreement between villagers. The contract had been drawn up, witnessed, notarized, and signed.
Streaks of red and orange in the sky promised a remarkable sunset, and soon a full, honey-colored moon would send sweet light shining down on her. Ellen continued to gaze out over the meadow as she sipped her whiskey. Sixty-four years of age and she never failed to be awestruck by the landscape. One didn’t have to profess a belief in fairies to cherish the trees, and the rolling green hills, and the cragged rocks. Preserve away, just don’t get carried away! Stories had their place, and their place was on the lips of seanchaíthe—professional storytellers enthralling folks gathered around a roaring turf fire.
Yes, she respected storytellers, with the exception of Eddie Doolan (don’t get her started), who could be seen spouting off everywhere she looked, draped in theatrical garb and stuttering around pretty women. He was giving professional storytellers a bad name, had no right to call himself a seanchaí.
Speaking of fools, in the distance a clump of color soon turned out to be her fellow art students, hiding behind their easels. Annabel’s evening painting class. She’d forgotten all about it. Was Mary Madigan among them, Annabel’s prize student? They would capture the setting sun, and the full moon, and then be gone. She prayed her tent would go unnoticed, relieved that the brown material blended in with the night and no one would think to look for it. She thought of making a fire but didn’t want to draw any unnecessary attention to herself.
When the sun finally dipped below the horizon, the art students packed up and disappeared. The moon did not disappoint—a fat orb pulsing with life. So palpable was its glow, Ellen could almost feel a magnetic pull, igniting the first prickle of fear. Nonsense.
She crawled into the tent lest her imagination get the best of her. Moments later she opened the flap and peered out at the hawthorn tree. She had to admit, against the amber sky the gnarled branches were ethereal and downright witchy. She took a last gulp of whiskey, noting with some shock the dent she’d put in it, as the nibbles of worry turned into vicious little bites. Would their deal be honored? How could anyone prove she’d actually spent the night? It dawned on her now, how foolish she’d been not to ask. Was she being watched? Once the thought hit, it took root, digging deep into her psyche. Someone, somewhere, was watching. Maybe several someones.
Let them.
There was a slight chill to the air and she snuggled farther into her sleeping bag. Fairies! Those tales were for fools. What time was it? Had she been here an hour or four?
They put a stray on you. If a fairy put a stray on you, you could be standing in your own yard and nothing would look familiar. What felt like days might only be hours. Was this what was happening to her?
Stop it. Stop it right now. Shame on her, a schoolteacher. She knew where she was. She knew who she was. A right fool. All to prove to an even bigger fool that no fairies meant her harm.
She just needed to fall asleep, that was the key to surviving this night. She’d been forbidden to bring her sleeping tablets. Cheating. At least the whiskey went unchallenged. She’d gotten the short stick, she saw that now. What was to stop a person from creeping up on her, pretending to be a fairy? She would not be fooled, or frightened. There was no need to jump at the crack of every little twig. She set her head back in her sleeping bag, pulled it up to her face, and closed her eyes. Outside there was a faint whistling of the wind, and her limbs began to relax as she listened to nature’s tunes. How sweet. It sounded like flutes.
Flutes! Someone was playing music nearby, trying to make her think it was fairy music.
She shot up, wishing she had brought a weapon. A knife from the kitchen at the least. She pawed her side for her torch. If anyone tried anything, she could strike them with it, and run. She found it, gripped it, then relaxed again once it was securely by her side. The wind was louder now, more of a roar than a whisper. She attempted to soothe herself by imagining cheerful fairies, dancing around the ring. Nothing to fear as long as you stayed out of their way.
The cottage was in their way. Why else had all the poor souls who lived there before her come to such misfortune? Just say it . . .
They died.
She sat bolt upright, for the voice had sounded real, not in her head, but like someone whispering the words directly into her tent. They died, they died, they died. A chorus of whispers now. How could that be? How could anyone know what she was thinking and finish her sentence out loud?
She reached for her torch but felt only the soft ground underneath the tent. It had been right there, right by her side. She was being tricked. Set up. She pawed the ground on both sides, all around the tent. Her torch was gone!
The sound of giggling, like children, filtered into the tent, making her blood run cold. “Who’s there?” She sounded terrified, which infuriated her. Another twig snapped. She sat hunched over inside her tent, eyes squeezed shut, livid at the tricks that were being played on her.
Malevolent.
The word came into her mind, and she felt little pinpricks all over her body. What if this wasn’t a simple prank; what if someone meant her real harm?
Run.
A dark shadow fell over the tent, and she squeezed her eyes and scrunched her body up in a ball, and that’s when she felt it. The tip of a bony finger touching her face, tracing her jawline. Her hands automatically tried to slap it away and met with nothing but air. Her eyes flew open. She saw nothing but the black of night. And yet someone was there. A creeper creeping.
Stories she’d heard over the years settled around her neck and squeezed like a pair of old hands. The farmer whose head was severed while trying to pull a fairy tree out of the ground with his tractor; the woman who had the gift of sight, only to have dozens of black beetles crawl out of her eyes the moment she died; cattle that were seemingly healthy one day struck dead in farmers’ fields the next. No one spared. Not even children. Sickened in their cribs, their souls snatched and switched. She shivered. She was hallucinating. Hearing things, seeing things, feelings things. Her limbs were tingling. Would they shut off that music? She clasped her hands over her ears as colored lights danced in her mind. Something strange was going on. This wasn’t worth it. They died, died, died. She had better do something before she was next. Dead. She scrambled out of the tent, set her sights on her cottage, and ran.
Summer had officially arrived in Kilbane, County Cork, Ireland, and the interior of Naomi’s Bistro captured the moment like a still-life painting. Sports equipment lay dumped in the hallway, runners littered the stairwell, and sunglasses hastily forgotten by customers stared up from tabletops. Once they opened for brekkie, the front door of the bistro would be in constant opening-slamming motion. Siobhán O’Sullivan loved every bit of it except for the occasional grumpy customer, the weeds that turned the back garden into a jungle if they didn’t keep up with it, and picking up after her siblings, and when that got old, nagging them to pick up after themselves. Blessed be thy summer days, but summer had a way of making everyone revolt. Alarms were ignored. Showers took longer. Even the rashers seemed to sizzle slower on the grill. Siobhán had just collected a pile of shoes and sunglasses, and was about to drop them in the lost and found bin, when a familiar knock sounded on the door. Three quick raps, a pause, and two more.
Siobhán dumped the gear and was already smiling when she opened the door. Macdara Flannery stood in front of her, his messy brown hair and smiling blue eyes a welcome sight. Her fiancé. Would she ever get used to that thought? They’d been secretly engaged since the spring, a delicious secret between the two of them. The gorgeous engagement ring he’d given her, an emerald set up high surrounded by diamonds forming a Celtic cross, was upstairs locked away in a keepsake box by her bed.
“Dara,” she said, leaning in for a quick kiss, “are you here for brekkie?”
It wasn’t until he stepped completely in that she saw his forehead was creased and his eyes weren’t as smiley as usual. He leaned against the door frame. “I have to go to Ballysiogdun.”
Ballysiogdun was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it type of village in rural County Cork. “Whatever for?” She waved him into the dining room. “Tea? Brown bread?”
“Cappuccino,” he said. “To go.”
“I like your style.” She set about making them both one, humming along to the whir of her favorite espresso machine. He was chewing on something and best let him spit it out for himself. She was on her summer break, an entire ten days off from garda duty. She wished she were going on a proper holiday, sunning in Spain, or even a few days in Dublin with Maria, but finances were stretched and a long list of family and bistro obligations dangled in front of her. How she missed the days when summer equaled freedom. When months were rolled out in front of her like a sun-kissed present. As an adult, it was just another season, hopefully with a bit less rain and an uptick in the temperatures. A time to weed the back garden and go for longer runs.
Macdara glanced around. “Where’s your brood?”
“Ann and Ciarán are having a lie-in. James and Elise are driving me mental with their on-again off-again romance and I have no idea where he is—”
The sound of heels clacking down the stairs startled them, followed by a flash of long black hair, a waft of perfume, and then the slam of the front door. Gráinne. Another one to keep an eye on. Siobhán looked out the window in time to see her sister wiggle off to Sheila’s Hair Salon. She was dressed in a short skirt, tights, heels, and her leather jacket. Was she getting her hair done this early? Did Sheila even wake up this early?
“Hiya,” Eoin called out with a wave as he ambled past Siobhán before disappearing into the kitchen. It took a moment for her to clock what was different about him. He hadn’t been wearing his Yankee baseball cap; instead he’d replaced it with a hairnet. Her brother was maturing. Seconds later came the smell and sound of rashers on the grill. Eoin had one more year until his Leaving Certificate, and after that hopefully university. For now, he was the main man running the bistro with their employee Bridie during the day, and working on his graphic novels at night. They starred, of all things, a superhero character based on her, frankly, and he’d made her into a redheaded Amazon lifting sheep over her head with one hand, but she wasn’t about to complain and stifle his creativity. On the surface, all was well with her brood. If only that meant peace of mind.
Siobhán found she worried even more when things were going well. She didn’t want to be a when-was-the-other-shoe-going-to-drop type lass, but with six of them, even if a shoe didn’t fall, there was at least always an untied lace to trip over. She was a proactive worrier.
She placed Dara’s cappuccino in a takeaway cup and handed it to him. “Brown bread?” She’d already made three batches this morning and was dying to dig in.
“I’m not hungry.”
She raised an eyebrow. Rare were the days when Macdara turned down any food let alone her brown bread. Enough stalling, he needed a push. “What’s the story?”
“My cousin Jane called. Aunt Ellen is in some kind of trouble.”
Siobhán knew that his mother had a sister and Macdara had one grown cousin, but she’d never met either of them. “What kind of trouble?”
“Jane wouldn’t say. It’s something bad. I could hear the terror in her voice.”
“Terror?” Macdara wasn’t a man prone to exaggeration unless he had a cold, and then he behaved as if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were riding straight for him.
“She was on the verge of hysteria. Said she didn’t trust her local guards. I told her I would be there straightaway.” His eyes flicked to her right hand. Zoomed in on her ring finger. Not this again. He loathed that she wasn’t wearing her engagement ring. It was way too dear. There was no way she was going to wear it. Not while cleaning. Or jogging. Or working. Or riding her scooter. Or going out to the shops or pubs. Or baking brown bread. Or eating brown bread. Too risky. Each outing an opportunity to lose it. She’d rather die.
“It’s safe,” she said. “I’ll always keep it safe.”
“And secret,” Macdara said, sounding none too pleased about it.
“We can’t torture people with a long engagement. You know how nosy folks are. They’ll hound us nonstop.”
“Is that the real reason?”
She frowned. He wasn’t playing nice. It’s not like he had to wear a giant ring effectively announcing that he was off-limits. She was still the newest member of the guards. Before they revealed their engagement, they were going to have to confess their relationship to their superiors. They could even be assigned to different garda stations. He knew all this. Yet he was pouting. “Why are you meeting your cousin in Ballysiogdun?” Deflection was a trick Detective Sergeant Macdara Flannery knew well, but she was banking on him realizing the futility of grilling her any further.
She had never been to the village, only through it, but she’d heard tales. As “small world rules” would have it, a lad who was in her class at Templemore Garda College worked in that village. Danny MacGregor. He said the folks there had their own way of doing things. Was he one of the guards Macdara’s cousin didn’t trust? If so, she had the wrong end of the stick. Danny was a good man all around, and in training promised to be an excellent guard.
“It seems they moved there a year ago,” Macdara said. “I only get the news from my mam.”
Siobhán raised an eyebrow. “How old is your cousin?”
“She’s in her thirties. But they have always lived together.”
Given that she would live with her siblings forever if she could have her way, Siobhán wasn’t going to judge. “You didn’t know they moved?”
“Aunt Ellen and Mam had a falling out. Last I knew they were living in Waterford.”
Waterford was a lovely place to visit. Why couldn’t they still be there? “How can I help?”
He relaxed and a soft smile brightened his handsome face. “I was hoping you’d want to come along.”
“Really?” The long list of things she had to do scrolled through her mind.
“You are my secret fiancée, aren’t you?”
“I am.” She mentally crumpled up her to-do list.
“It’s time you met more of my family.”
“I agree. However . . .” He arched an eyebrow. “It doesn’t sound like this is a good time for happy introductions.”
He treated her to a sheepish grin. “I’m not good with hysterical women.”
There it was. The real reason he wanted her to go. He wanted a buffer between himself and a hysterical woman. Typical. “And you think I am?”
“You have your moments, don’t you?”
She poured her cappuccino into another takeaway cup. She could hardly argue with that. She held up her finger. “Let me have a word with Eoin.”
“Grab your Wellies,” Dara said. “We’re going to need them.”
Siobhán gazed out the car window, taking in the soft hills glowing underneath the summer sun, dotted with grazing cows, fat sheep, and rocky hedges. She was happy to let Macdara drive. Better he focus on the road than her naked ring finger. Ballysiogdun was a long enough drive, and if she didn’t find a way to keep him occupied, she feared he’d try to return to their earlier argument. One cappuccino hardly sufficed as enough fuel for his grudges. Luckily, she had the perfect excuse—she was dying to know more about this mysterious cousin who had summoned him.
Macdara cleared his throat. “Have you told anyone about our engagement?”
Her efforts had been in vain. “I whisper it to the stars at night.”
“Do you now? I suppose I should count m’self lucky.”
“The Little Dipper approves, but the Big One says the jury is still out.” She paused, and when he didn’t laugh she figured it was too late to stop now. “I guess that isn’t any constellation.” She laughed so hard it took her a while to realize she was the only one. Nothing. Not even a smile. Why didn’t he understand? Once she started wearing the ring it would become everybody’s business. They’d never get this time back. A secret just between them. “It’s not that I’m not chuffed to bits.”
He gripped the steering wheel, and she gripped her seat as he sped up. “You’ve changed your mind about the ring?”
“Macdara Flannery, I love that ring nearly as much as I love you.”
He frowned, and then laughed. Finally. It melted her heart just a little. “Then why?”
“Don’t you see? We’ll be hounded nonstop. ‘When is the wedding? Where is the wedding? Why are you waiting so long?’”
“Maybe we shouldn’t.”
“Shouldn’t what?”
“Wait so long.”
They had agreed not to set a wedding date. In her mind, they could be engaged for five years or more. What was the rush? Things were going well, and it was an unspoken rule that you didn’t mess with things when they were going well. She listened to the sound of the tires on the pavement, the wind whistling through the open window, and imagined she could hear the soft thwack of the windmills churning in the distance. She focused on the greenery outside. It was calming. “What is your auntie like?”
“Are you changing the subject?”
She gently shoved his shoulder. “Marrying a man with big brains, aren’t I?”
He shook his head, but she could tell he was going to leave it for now. “Well. You’ve met me mother.”
“Yes.” She had met Nancy Flannery a few times. An image of her downturned mouth and disapproving eyes came to mind. It was impossible to imagine her being thrilled with the news. No one was good enough for her son.
“She’s the pleasant one.”
“Your mam is the plea. . .
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