ã€ŠThe Witches of Slievenamonã€‹


 PROLOGUE

    The mountain track has been steadily climbing but I am running easily and breathing lightly, despite a slight stitch in my right side. The day has been warm, being Samhradh and I¨²il, the ninth month of the year, just seven days before the season of F¨®mhar, the harvest time. The clouds are thick and the air hot and humid, sapping the strength of females of any fuller figure than I trying to race up to the summit.

    There is no need of haste, though. We three sisters together have left the rest of the girls behind, breaking those who set out ahead of us by first allowing the desperate to burn themselves out on the mountain slopes before overhauling the rest by practised relentless pace.

    Five and three steps behind my sisters was ideal placing for me with the final stretch of the race almost in view. Both sisters were older, Kaetlynn, one and twenty, and Bebhinn, ten and nine. The leather-shod feet of my two elder sisters crunch more heavily now on the ancient pebbles and stones that make up the well-trod pathway leading to the summit. My sisters are heavier and more sturdily built than I and, up front, Bebhinn¡¯s head is rolling side to side and Kaetlynn thereupon takes up the leading place. Kaetlynn is no virgin like us, but a widow following a lightning raid by Icelanders longboatmen and has borne a child in sore need of a father.

    I seek a good man, too, though I care naught for wealth nor power, I am a strong woman and will make my own way in the world but I do so want children; daughters I desire mostly, for I have only had sisters, six in number, lo the eldest having left home these eight years since.

    To have a family of my own I need a strong man who will love my children and provide a good bride price for each daughter to marry well when of age. For I will need a true man, not a god nor one of the Tuatha d¨¦ Danann. My people are mortals and mortals do not fear death as it is our common destiny but we respect its finality. The immortals do not fear death, although they can be killed, and they do not respect the dignity and honour of death either, so how can they respect the dignity of life?

    Today¡¯s race has been called by the High King of Ireland, Cormac mac Airt, who declared that his hero, Fionn Mac Cumhaill, must marry since he lost his wife long ago and his child now full-grown and ready to lead the Fianna, but to prove herself worthy of being the wife of such a hero any girl must prove her mettle against all-comers in a running race from the base of Slievenamon Mount to the Peak.

    Now, Fionn is said to be a good man, huge, brave and powerful, and comely too according to his frequent boasts and bolstered by common testimony. So today I have set my heart on him, if not yet set my eyes. As have my sisters and countless other wenches with legs, lungs and heart enough to win such a man.

    I had studied the drawings of the hill path before setting out and know that the path will turn left at the next outcrop of rock and then the cairn on the summit will appear and we¡¯d see our goal resplendent there, the giant man Fionn, the promised prize to be the husband of the winner of this race.

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

    I will time my sprint as soon as I pass the outcrop.

    Since I was about twelve bliain I have always been a runner for my King and any other sub-king prepared to pay me in coin or kind. Along with my sisters I was a messenger, as our mother had been before us, carrying messages from king to king, headman to merchant, merchant to warehouse, warehouse to port and back.

    Messengers carry the Wayleave Seal of the king, a coin struck in bronze that would give us safe passage, or sign our death warrant if the local chieftains held a grudge against the king or sub-king that issued the token. Some messages are painted in runes upon rolled and ribboned sheephide but most are verbal, tempered in versed stanzas for convenience of memory.

    We turn the corner by the outcrop and there in front of us is the back of a running girl not before seen by us on the mountain

    ¡°Where in Brigit¡¯s Forge did this bitch spring from?!¡± puffs Bebhinn in the lead.

    ¡°Feck knows! Kick on Bebh, my wind has gone,¡± Kaetlynn grinds to a halt, her heart broken with her chance of victory gone.

    I kick on, I know I have the legs of Bebhinn, and in half a dozen strides I¡¯m past my sister but the stranger is running strongly on what looks like fresh legs and, with my lungs bursting and cramping thighs, the girl beats me and leaps into Fionn¡¯s awaiting arms.

    ¡°Feck! How did we lose?¡± Bebhinn says, ¡°I expected to lose to you Etain, but knew as bride of a hero you¡¯d look after Kaetlynn and her wean, but not to this wee sparrow.¡±

    ¡°We were cheated,¡± Kaetlynn says, walking up to Bebh and me, bent over winded in our disappointment. ¡°I looked at the rocky outcrop as I walked past and there¡¯s a wee rill by the side where a goat might hide and take flight as we crunched up the path, but no place for any runner to stop with the cairn in full view. Look at them, they are both in the game of cheating.¡±

    We turn and look. The couple are all but devouring each other, Fionn¡¯s hands running about the maiden unchecked.

    ¡°They are not strangers,¡± Bebhinn states with confidence.

    ¡°Nay strangers these be,¡± agrees Kaetlynn, ¡°And I know who she is, she¡¯s Gr¨¢inne, the youngest daughter of King Cormac, his favourite, and rumour has it that Fionn is besotted with her.¡±

    I look and see the couple who are oblivious to company, we might as well be invisible. I look closely, she is small, barely ten-and-four hands tall and fair, maybe one and five bliain; while he is a giant, twenty or one-and-twenty hands tall and old and fat too. He is called Finn meaning white or light skinned but they must refer to his hair and beard, with more white than grey and his warring days are clearly over. As I look at them in disgust, they break their kiss and the girl smirks at me, relishing her prize, the bitch! They are both cheats and she is not and never was one of the fair women of the mountain.

    She¡¯s welcome to the prize, Fionn may be a legend, but that will be all she¡¯ll be to him.

    Which reminds me. ¡°Sisters, are we not witches, daughters and granddaughters of witches with any number o¡¯ geasa within our beck?¡±

    ¡°We have, sister,¡± Kaetlynn grins, ¡°I¡¯ve one that¡¯s a daisy, she¡¯ll see him appear twenty years older and then fall in love with the first man of Fionn¡¯s close acquaintance. My foresight may be hazy because I¡¯m all in bits, but I can see an elopement, fruitless pursuit and an eventual reckoning for them, but for us, we¡¯ll be outcast and alone possibly forever.¡±

    ¡°Feck it,¡± I say, ¡°cast your geas, I can live with the consequences.¡±

    ¡°Aye,¡± Bebhinn agrees, ¡°together we can.¡±

 Chapter One TAKING IN A STRAY

    I know I am running a little late, driving along in the pouring rain to collect my daughter Caoimhe from school. The potential client who I had lunched with in a Cashel pub for over three interminable hours just droned on and on about his damned family.

    It was all, ¡®the wife does this¡¯ and ¡®then the wife does the other thing, do¡¯yer believe that?¡¯, which made the lunch even more tortuous than business lunches usually are.

    I¡¯m a computer engineer, I like fiddling with hardware and software, and love being left alone to get on with installations, upgrading or repairing, but I do also have to drum up sales in the form of new custom, too, part of being a one-man band of a huge international company tucked away in a quiet out of the way outpost.

    Every great job has its downsides.

    Anyway, discussions about other families just get to me more than they really should.

    Yeah, thanks Mac, when the client casually asks me if I believe it, when he really doesn¡¯t care if I believe it or not, I do believe it.

    Yeah, been there, done that once but not recently and never again, probably.

    There are some fading memories that never quite fade out to nothing, like those old computer monitors used to. I know it¡¯s off and will never be switched on again but that little glow lingers on in perpetual torment.

    So, yeah, sometimes I am only hanging on in the present with more than a foot and half a leg into the past. It¡¯s not that the past was so good for very long but the future just takes me where I really would have no wish to go at all if it wasn¡¯t for Caoimhe being my whole world now.

    So, you¡¯re wondering, just who is the grumpy dude you¡¯re reading the sorry thoughts and miscellaneous musings of?

    Yeah me.

    I¡¯m Richard (never Dick or Rick or Rich) Kloss and I am also running late because of the Irish weather as well as the overlong lunch.

    Heavy was the rain until just a minute ago, and the spray from the road thrown up by all the Friday trucks, trying to get the shops supplied for the weekend, is absolutely crazy.

    I can¡¯t see much of the road in front of me, the rear view is a total white-out blur and I have to go slow for safety. Better that Caoimhe wait a few minutes in the sheltered entrance outside the school than forever wait for some loved one who will never come.

    Yeah, I know how that feels too.

    At the moment I am driving Northwards between Cashel and Thurles on the Slievenamon Road, otherwise known as the N62, which is on the south side of Thurles, County Tipperary.

    OK, I know what you¡¯re thinking, ¡®Richard Kloss¡¯ doesn¡¯t sound very Irish, in fact not Irish at all, not even an Anglo surname that is still common in the area. So, you might ask, what am I, an American, a single, well-preserved 39 years of age computer engineer from Santa Monica, in Sunny California, doing here in the rain in the rural centre of Ireland?

    Well, I¡¯m of Irish extraction mixed with German (one side of my family moved to the States from Ireland in 1846 and the other side from the Palatine region of Bavaria in 1848, according to the immigration records, then moved across country by the 1920s to become a middle class white family in Pico District, where my great-grandpa started working in the aircraft building industry).

    As far as I know I¡¯m the only one of my family who has returned to Ireland to live permanently. I and we like it here, ¡®we¡¯ being my daughter and I.

    It¡¯s all Caoimhe has known anyway, other than the odd Thanksgiving trip ¡®home¡¯, and even ¡®home¡¯ has changed in her lifetime. My parents moved to Culver City while I was in college for a while and finally retired to Florida five years ago, so Ireland, Thurles in particular, is definitely home for my little family of two.

    I moved to Cork from California about twelve years ago as a post-grad at University College Cork doing my Masters Degree in Computer Science. I met an adorable local girl, redhead Ella Bernadette Walsh, we married, we had a kid, only my wife El died while giving birth and my baby and I have stayed on in the cottage that we bought in Thurles. When I say in, I mean a couple of kilometres south of the town centre, on the very road we are travelling on, as it happens.

    I¡¯m playing Leonard Cohen on Bluetooth, that¡¯s the kinda mood I¡¯m usually in when I¡¯m on my own, so bite me, why don¡¯t ya?

    When I pick Caoimhe up from school in a few minutes then of course I¡¯ll be willingly forced to play song after song of Olivia Rodrigo, a singer that she is so into right now. Well, she is 10 going on 20, my girl.

    The windscreen wipers are wiping on max and barely coping with the wet even though I suspect the rain has slowed or even stopped. There is so much spray, though, it¡¯s like driving through a thick cloud. I¡¯m doing barely 60km/hr on the N62, the visibility is that poor. Especially as there¡¯s a big silver truck ahead of me with no wheel flaps, that¡¯s sending up a wall of spray so my view of the road is rivalling one from the Maid of the Mist at Niagra Falls. I can¡¯t see enough of what¡¯s coming towards me from beyond the truck to risk overtaking, so I drop back a few feet to improve my view of the road.

    Now my view is a little bit clearer and I see the big truck go through a huge puddle spreading halfway across our side of the road, sending a huge tsunami wave right across the sidewalk and the high hedgerow behind.

    I slow down as I know there will be a huge back wash in whatever casual water lies on the road that could drag me off the road.

    And now I see there in the middle of the sidewalk, after the wave hits the ground, stands a person absolutely drenched from top to toe.

    "Damn!" I exclaim and automatically press harder on the brakes.

    Well, what would you do? Drive by and toot? No of course not, we¡¯re all perfect gentlemen at heart, aren¡¯t we?

    It was the truck driver¡¯s fault, maybe he was deliberate splashing or simply couldn¡¯t see the person in the rain and drove by unaware of what they¡¯ve done? It must be another 5 or 6km to Thurles. A long way to walk when you¡¯ve stepped out of a dirty cold shower in the clothes you¡¯re dressed in. Can¡¯t just abandon them, someone has to stop, I mean we regular motorists are the modern-day knights of the road, yeah?

    So I check the mirror. I can¡¯t see anything at all in the misty cloud coming up behind me, yup, cautious and careful¡¯s my middle name when I¡¯m driving in Ireland, even after 12 years it still feels like I¡¯m driving on the wrong side of the road.

    Yeah, I know, the locals would call me an eejit, but here I am stopping for someone on a lonely road on a miserable day.

    Not all hitchikers are Texas chain saw handlers, I tell myself.

    Well, I have picked up the odd one here, hitchhikers, not chainsawmen, much more readily than I ever would Stateside and have never met a murderer yet.

    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    As for safety in stopping, I¡¯ve got my fogs on front and rear, so I should be seen even if I stop for a minute or so on what passes as a fast road in Ireland.

    I indicate left and switch it to hazards, and slow to a stop next to who I can now see is a woman, well, a girl really, very slim build, 5 foot 5 or 5 foot 6 maybe, I guess, probably a student who can¡¯t afford to use the bus up from the Horse & Jockey. She¡¯s just lowering one hand after no doubt delivering a suitable sign language message to the driver. It could have been a middle finger but I¡¯ve noticed that the two-finger reverse ¡®Victory¡¯ sign seems to find most favour around these parts.

    The girl is wearing running gear, a T and shorts, trainers without socks and carrying a large purse over her shoulder, sorry a handbag ¡ª El was always correcting me on that. Her dark hair is plastered flat against her head. Everything she has is streaming water.

    I step out of the car without thinking and step straight into the feckin¡¯ puddle up right up over my ankles, the very puddle I knew was there but had forgotten already.

    And these are my best court shoes that I only ever wear to meet clients or potential clients. Usually, like the soaked girl here, I favour trainers for everyday wear. Hey look, I do jog ¡­ not every day, no, but two of three times a week before work, to be honest once or twice some weeks.

    "Hey, there," I call across the roof of the car. "Do you need a lift, ma¡¯am? I¡¯m heading towards Thurles?"

    The woman is wet through and dripping, no, make that streaming. But she smiles, quite sweetly, considering her circumstances, saying, "No thanks soir, I¡¯s fine."

    Hey, I¡¯m too much of a gentleman to simply leave her, even on her say-so. The Irish are just so damn polite, that¡¯s why I love ¡¯em so much. She is absolutely soaked through and that puddle weren¡¯t no Lemon Evian. I guess she¡¯s probably afraid to step into a stranger¡¯s car. OK, I get that.

    "Look ma¡¯am, at least get in and out of the rain and warm up for a few minutes. You just get your phone out, dial 112 and get ready to send if I start any funny business. I assure you I have no such intention. I have clean towels in the trunk; I¡¯ve a daughter of 10 who never misses a puddle, ever, what can I say?"

    "Ah," she says, looking at me with her head at an oblique angle, "you¡¯re a visitor here, calling this drizzle ¡®rain¡¯ when all it is is a soft day with a wee bit o¡¯ spit. So, ¡¯tis a daughter that you have now, is it?"

    I notice that she has a soft, rural musical voice, pleasant to the ear, like her native tongue was Gaeilge and English words were naturally turned into a melody of her own making.

    "Yeah, and I need to pick her up from school and, well now," I say as I look at my watch. "I¡¯m running a little bit late, so she¡¯ll be looking at biting off my head, rather like you were wishing on that trucker that drenched you."

    "Well, I was actually wishing his innards would be biting his arse so I did, because I draw the line at biting off heads just for a simple soaking." She smiles very faintly, but standing there with her head held high and proud, I thought she looked damned cute, far too young for an ¡®ould fella¡¯ like me, though, as Caoimhe would put it, but cute all the same.

    "But whatever, although I am in a hurry, I saw you get soaked and I didn¡¯t want to abandon you, it¡¯s miles to the next town, and I¡¯d feel guilty all day and guilty every day I pass this spot in the rain. And that means I¡¯ll feel guilty pretty well forever."

    "Ha!" she laughs. "You don¡¯t seem so bad a person, for a fella."

    She sounds bitter at the end there and I wonder what her last fella did to upset her. She continues.

    "Then I¡¯ll come with you in your ¡­ carriage."

    "It¡¯s an SUV, electric," I say, quite proud of the car. It was too bloody expensive in the first place, but it is economical to run, easy to drive, and I felt good that I was doing some small thing for the planet. I had to do something to offset my total love of juicy rare steaks.

    "I know no-one at all where I¡¯m going but I, well, I¡¯m more comfortable talking to girls than fellas ¡­ I¡¯m in no hurry to get there so I¡¯d like to meet her, it¡¯ll be be nice to talk to your daughter and maybe her mother too."

    "Unfortunately Caoimhe¡¯s mother is ¡­ well, she¡¯s no longer with us."

    "Sorry to hear that, was her departure recent?"

    "My wife died while giving birth to Caoimhe," I say for probably the thousandth time. It never got any easier nor did it ever sound fairer than it did before, however many times I say it.

    "Caoimhe means ¡®noble¡¯, I believe," the girl says as I splash my way around the automobile to open and hold the door for her.

    "Okay, get in. Wait! I¡¯ll spread some towels for you to sit on first."

    "Is she a princess, your daughter, if you know what I mean?"

    "Oh yeah, she¡¯s a diva alright, the original," I say, can¡¯t help smiling when I talk or even think about my daughter, except those times when I wish she wasn¡¯t my daughter, which was becoming increasingly more common as she becomes more independent.

    I splash my way back to the trunk, opening it up for some of the neatly folded towels I mentioned to her earlier. They¡¯re handy for packing round computer servers, supermarket shopping, as well as wet girls, and I wash them regularly enough because I like things clean and neat, minimalistic. I hate clutter.

    I drop most of the towels on the passenger seat and over the back of the seat, pop a small one under my arm, shake out the biggest one and hold it up ready to drape around her. I can¡¯t help but notice the ¡®wet T-shirt effect¡¯ that shows she¡¯s not wearing a bra under her T. She might be slim and boyish in build but those points show she¡¯s all girl. She turns away a quarter turn, inviting me to drape the towel over her shoulders, her long slim fingers lifting her very long singularly plaited black hair out of the way before settling the braid across her front.

    "I¡¯d really like to meet your daughter, d¡¯you think she would be amenable to talk to a drowned rat such as I?"

    "I¡¯m sure she¡¯d love to meet you, it¡¯s, we¡¯re, well, we¡¯re a little isolated where we live, so other than seeing her school friends during the day, well, I guess I think she misses female company. I know she misses my neighbour terribly since she went away recently. Anyway, I don¡¯t want to take you out of your way via the school, where are you heading, ma¡¯am?"

    "McCullogh¡¯s Cottages."

    "In the Slievenamon Road?"

    "Aye, a wee bit further along this very road, before the golf course, I understand. It used ta be my aunt¡¯s place, Number 1 of two cottages it is, but it¡¯s mine now. It¡¯s been a few months me making up my mind to come or not. I¡¯m the last of my family and ¡¯tis a big thing to uproot yourself, so it is."

    "Yeah, I know. The place has been empty for a few months, ma¡¯am, it might not be what you¡¯re used to find inside, you know, a bit damp and all, while the the furnishings are sparse and old. Not sure if she¡¯s left any fuel or even kindling to hand, certainly no food, because the fridge was completely cleaned out. You could have some of our supplies of course to tide you over. How is Katie, has she settled happily in her new home?"

    "Oh, she¡¯s fine, complains all the feckin¡¯ time but she¡¯s fair in herself. Do you know my aunt¡¯s place?"

    "Yeah, I live next door at Number 2."

    "Oh! That¡¯s grand, I don¡¯t have a key and I know from er Aunt Kaetlynn that you do, so you could let me in."

    "But how do I know you¡¯re¡­."

    "That Kaetlynn is my aunt and that her place is now my place? Because I can tell you exactly how many teaspoons are in her kitchen drawer, it¡¯s four."

    "How?¨C"

    "I¡¯ll tell you over a wee brew o¡¯ tea, I¡¯m sure Caoimhe would like to hear the story. I brought my favourite tea blend in my bag, fortunately in a waterproof tin."

    I laugh to myself, what an intriguing girl! I hand her the spare towel, "For your hair and arms," before splashing back through the puddle to the driver¡¯s side. Checking before stepping out, there¡¯s nothing coming up the road.

    "Look, there¡¯s spare face masks in the glove compartment," I say as I put on mine which was stored in my door pocket where I dropped it after lunch.

    She looks blankly at me, so I open the glovebox with my left hand, careful not to freak her out by brushing her knee or anything, and get a fresh one out of the wrapper.

    She looks at mine, turns hers over and puts it on the right way around. I do up my seat belt and she copies me.

    I look in the mirror, the road is still empty behind me, I start off and am soon running about 70km/hr with a clear road ahead of us. The rain has stopped and the spray from the oncoming traffic down to virtually nothing.

    "Richard," I say, "my name, I¡¯m pleased to meet you."

    "Etain," she replies, "my pleasure to meet you ¡­ and thank you for being a gentleman."

    I glance at her quickly, she does have a nice smile. I wonder if she is a student, wonder what she¡¯s studying and how would she get there and back from McCullogh¡¯s Cottages? We¡¯re pretty isolated there. And where was her luggage, clothes, supplies, even just cleaning supplies, ready for moving into her aunt¡¯s cottage?

    We don¡¯t go far before I can start to ask any questions, and then we see the very same silver truck stopped at the side of the road parked at an unsafe angle half up on the grass verge.

    I slow down and can clearly see somebody squatting between the truck and the hedgerow, holding up the back of his yellow hi-vis top to prevent soiling it. Clearly he¡¯s been caught short and couldn¡¯t make to the next set of jacks.

    "Ha!" I say to my passenger while tooting the driver with a long blast on my horn, "that¡¯s karma for yah!"

    She sits there relaxed into the seat and smiling like a slim Buddha, "Oh aye, I feel a whole lot calmer now."

 Chapter Two SETTLING IN

    We drive most of the way up to the school in relative silence, with me concentrating on watching the road carefully. The sun has come out soon after the rain and the glare off the wet road generally heading North-North-West is distracting, especially as the afternoon traffic increased with parents picking up their children from school.

    Why is it that when it rains so many parents drop off and pick up their kids? Surely the kids have got used to Irish rain by the time they go to school. If it didn¡¯t rain, surely they¡¯d miss it.

    I have to collect my kid from school anyway because a few months ago she was subjected to some bullying from older girls on her way home; it was outside the school and the school seemed powerless to do anything about it. I work out of home so it wasn¡¯t much of an inconvenience to me most of the time. I stopped her using the bus and and started to drive her to and from school.

    I think the bullying has had an effect on her, hardening her somehow. She used to be so loving but she has been getting increasingly belligerent towards me. A shame, because she used to be such a sweet schoolgirl, now she seems to have the attitudes of a teenager three years too soon.

    Etain uses the towel to pat her hair dry without bothering to undo the tight braiding. Even dry the hair looks jet black in contrast to her white skin, even her bare arms are white. I only steal glances at her and assess that she could even be as young as 18, in looks, but she seems to have an air of confidence that makes her seem older somehow. Although I suggested before she got in the car that she get her cell phone out and key in the Garda¡¯s emergency number, she has made no attempt to do so and doesn¡¯t seem afraid of me.

    Although I¡¯m 6-1 to her 5-6, I¡¯m slim and ¡®bookish¡¯, looking nerdish rather than athletic. I don¡¯t do gym, just 45 minutes¡¯ running at weekends. Because Caoimhe¡¯s not a morning person, I can get out of the cottage early on Saturdays and Sundays for a run without her feeling abandoned.

    ¡°The school is only a couple of minutes away from here,¡± I say at last. ¡°Your clothes are soaked through, so you can stay here in the warm car while I fetch her from the school building. They won¡¯t let us drive inside the school and there¡¯s a no-parking restriction on the road either side of the school gates. Will you be all right on your own just for a few minutes?¡±

    ¡°I am often on my own, Richard, and I am comfortable sitting here. Where is the music coming from? Because that fella can¡¯t hold a tune to save his life. ¡±

    "Ah, he¡¯s from Canada."

    Leonard Cohen is an acquired taste, he was a poet which maybe why the words are more important than the delivery. I like him a lot but Caoimhe absolutely hates most of the music I play and I guess to a 10-year-old it is ¡®oldies¡¯ music. Etain clearly enjoys new younger music.

    "Hey, I have some Olivia Rodrigo on my cell that I could play instead," I grin knowing that although girls of 10 love that stuff, an older teenager might or might not.

    "Do they play reels or jigs, Richard?" she replies, "because I love to dance and you can¡¯t possibly dance to this noise."

    Jigs and reels? Well, you can knock me down with a feather.

    "Gee, I do have some traditional music,¡± I reply, ¡°and have a collection of a number of traditional albums on shuffle."

    The traffic is not too heavy here and we are going slow to suit the built-up area, so I click on my cell phone and find the selection and press, a snatch of fiddle music, which starts halfway through the last time I played it.

    I laugh as Etain starts to jiggle in her seat. She joins me, laughing at the joyful playing.

    Two minutes later I park as close to the school as I can. No other cars are about so I know without even looking at the clock that delaying to pick up my wet passenger means I am once again the last terrible parent to pick up their precious rugrat.

    "You stay and listen to the music, I¡¯ll go fetch my daughter."

    "All right, Richard, I¡¯ll wait. You know you¡¯re lucky, a daughter is a blessing."

    Yeah, only at times like this having a daughter also means I know I¡¯m going to get a thorough telling off for being late and a grilling for picking up a hitchhiker.

    Caoimhe is abusive at my lateness as she has been to me for some months.

    "Well, father, what bloody time do you call this?" Caoimhe spits, standing under the shelter of the overhang in front of the school entrance with her arms folded. She gets fined from her pocket money if she swears; a year ago she started using ¡®feck¡¯ or ¡®fecking¡¯ and I had to put my foot down and she ended up with an overdraft, but it taught her a lesson. There is a light rain falling, even though the sun, low in the late afternoon sky, is shining and highlighting her fiery frizzy red hair.

    "I¡¯ve seen her, Dad, I saw her as you parked the car and see you spoke to her before you got out. Who¡¯s the young woman in the front seat? You haven¡¯t started courtin¡¯ now have you? At your age, you should be ashamed of yourself, Dad. Or is it that your goin¡¯ through a mid-life crisis in yer ould age?"

    I turn to look back the way I came and from where she stands you can see where my SUV is parked through the school railings and Etain can be seen observing us through the side window. As she sees us turn and look in her direction, Etain smiles and for an instant her smile outshines the sun.

    "Oh, she¡¯s cute, father, what school does she go to?"

    ¡®Be polite for once, Keev, and play nice, she¡¯s not a school girl, she¡¯s our new next door neighbour."

    I smile at Etain, returning her brilliant smile with what counts as my best smile, silently thanking my parents for paying for the orthodontist to sort out the mess in my upper set during my formative years.

    "Really? She moved in today?"

    "No, not even moved in yet, I picked her up and I¡¯m taking her home after collecting you along the way. She asked to meet with you, being young girls, her a teenager and you almost one, might have a lot in common. We probably need to stop for groceries though because the house is empty and she doesn¡¯t appear to have an auto."

    "So what¡¯s she doing in the car?" she questions, "did she ring for you to collect her from the station?"

    "No, she was walking all the way along the Slievenamon Road and she got soaked, not just from the rain but seriously splashed by a wave of dirty water from a passing truck. I stopped to pick her up."

    "Dad, you should never pick up hitchhikers, for all you knew she might¡¯ve been a murderer."

    "Nah, I¡¯ve never picked up a murderer yet and, look at her, she¡¯s only a wee girl, not much bigger than you."

    "You only need to pick up one murderer Dad, you bloody eejit, the first crazy pick up¡¯ll be your last and I¡¯ll become a broken-hearted orphan and a guest of the County and end up homeless and hopeless. So who exactly is she? I didn¡¯t see any signs up for the cottage being up for sale."

    "No, the cottage has not been sold, she¡¯s Mrs Wisniewski¡¯s niece. As far as I know she may be house-sitting and getting the place clean and lived in to max out the price until the cottage is sold. Usually, when old people like her aunt has to go in to a retirement home, the property would be sold to meet the care home fees, but maybe she¡¯s allowed a few months¡¯ grace until sold, so be nice to her, she tells me she doesn¡¯t know anyone else around here."

    "If she¡¯s her niece, how come we¡¯ve never seen her around here before? And I can¡¯t remember Katie ever mentioning any relatives except her sister, who used to live in our place before you and Mum moved in and long before I was born. What was the sister¡¯s name now? ¡­ Beverley?"

    "Yes, Bev, short for Bevin, I think. Well, this is their niece and her name is Etain, she¡¯s young, student age I guess, seems nice and friendly, has got excellent taste in music, and she¡¯s now our only neighbor for miles. So, for once in your very short life, Keev, please play nice."

    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

    We start to walk down the school path to the gate.

    "I¡¯m always nice, Da ¡ª¡± Caoimhe insists, "and Katie was as spry as anyone that old that I know. I mean, weren¡¯t you surprised when you saw her note about leaving?"

    "Sure, but when we bought our cottage, she¡¯d only just lost her husband and then her sister who lived in our place moved in with her for a few months, but I remember Katie saying thatthey got on each other¡¯s nerves and so her sister Bev moved out. I¡¯ve no idea where she went, as Katie handled the estate agent and was the main contact. I think Katie liked your mother a lot and accepted our offer over others even though we could barely afford it at the time. She was a great comfort to me when Ella died. Katie adored you, you know, and not just because she accepted being your godmother."

    "Yeah, me too, I loved Aunt Katie. She never judged me. I¡¯d love to see her again, can we find out where her home is and go visit?"

    "We¡¯ll see what Etain says. We don¡¯t know how well she is. There¡¯s a lot of dementia around among old people."

    "OK, so where did you pick her up?"

    "I picked her up in the rain, she¡¯s still soaked and not been home yet. So we¡¯re not going directly home, but to the store for groceries and whatever else she needs in order to move in."

    I realise that the large bag she¡¯s carrying isn¡¯t large enough to contain any change of clothes. I remembered that Katie only left me a note a few months ago to say she was moving out into a home and asked me to keep an eye on the place for a while. I¡¯d been given a back door key many years before, as I had given our front door key and the code to the alarm to her, as good neighbors and she had clearly used my key to leave her note on my kitchen counter where I¡¯d see it when I put my coffee maker on. I had immediately cleaned out her frig and moved all her house plants into a sheltered part of the garden by the house where I could water them easily. I never felt the need to check her drawers or wardrobes but was sure she only had ¡®old people¡¯ clothes and I rarely saw her wearing anything new or fashionable, so Etain would probably not find anything at all to change into.

    We reach the car and open the rear door for Caoimhe to get in. Her usual seat is behind the passenger seat, so I can see her from the driver¡¯s seat and, as she is still on the petite side for her age she uses a booster seat.

    "Hiya," she says cheerfully, continuing, "I¡¯m Caoimhe, how you going? Dad tells me you¡¯re Mrs Wisniewski¡¯s niece, we really miss her, how is she?"

    "Nice to meet you, Caoimhe, that¡¯s a lovely name, I¡¯m Etain," Etain says as she turns in her seat to address her, "Aunt Kaetlynn¡¯s in a better place now."

    "Oh my god, you mean she died?" Caoimhe retorts in shock, "I know she was old. I mean she was even older than Dad, but she always seemed so ¡­ full of life."

    "No, she¡¯s not dead, not quite anyways, but she¡¯s in a better place, a place that¡¯s better than this.¡¯" Etain smiles at the girl. "Once she partook of food and drink in that place, she now belongs there rather than just a visitor. I think she¡¯s happy now, she misses her husbands and was lonely. At least she has her sister for company."

    "Oh, yeah, your Aunt Bev was it?"

    "Bebhinn," Etain confirms, "she¡¯s the quiet one in the family, hardly ever talks at all."

    "So they¡¯re both together in a nice place?" Caoimhe asks.

    "Oh aye, it¡¯s beautiful there, warm, dry and safe, it¡¯s just not for me, not yet anyway."

    "Of course not, you¡¯ve your whole life ahead of you," I say as I put on my seat belt and start the engine running. "Right, you¡¯re going to need groceries, Etain, because there¡¯s nothing in the pantry or the frig¡ª"

    "Uh, there¡¯ll be plenty of food in the garden and I know she has some honey in the pantry."

    "I don¡¯t think so," I say, "I know your Aunt Bev kept bees more than a dozen years ago but by the time my wife and I moved in the bees¡¯d already flown away and the old straw hives ¡ª"

    "Skeps," she interrupts, "the woven hives Bebhinn would have used are called skeps."

    "Whatever. They¡¯ve gone, they were empty and they just rotted away by the time Ella and I had got the inside of the cottage modernised and we started work on the jungle that was the garden."

    "Not to worry, I can gather the materials and make some more, Richard."

    "But you¡¯ll still need some basics, like bread, milk, butter ¡ª" I am cut off by her protest.

    "But I can¡¯t go to the market until I¡¯ve been to the cottage," Etain butts in, "I don¡¯t have any coin about me until I get to Kaetlynn¡¯s cottage."

    "I knew it!" Caoimhe shouts in triumph, "I told you, Dad, that Katie had a stash of cash but you stopped me having a nose. Dad¡¯ll spot you for your stuff while you get your messages, won¡¯t you Da? We can drop into Dunnes on the way home, sure you can pick up any or everything from Dunnes. We go there all the time, don¡¯t we Da?"

    "Yeah we do," I look Etain in the eye with what I call my ¡®gunfighter stare¡¯ that I deliver to clients when the chips are down, like the server¡¯s fried and they need a new one that¡¯s not going to be cheap and this is showdown time. "You¡¯ll need the fresh dairy and bread basics, including a few cans for the next week, any condiments, ¡¯erbs and spices and some stuff for the ice box. Your aunt has an old frig with a freezer compartment big enough for an ice cube tray, a pack of fish fingers and a bag of peas and, because the power has been off for months, we may have to keep the stuff in our freezer overnight."

    "But, I don¡¯t know how much paper coin¡ª"

    "Don¡¯t worry about paying us back, Etain," I say, "the basics won¡¯t amount to much, consider it a neighborly gesture."

    "But¡ª"

    "Go on, Etain," Caoimhe butts in, "let my Dad pay for the messages, it¡¯ll make his day and I¡¯ll chuck a few of our bits in too. It¡¯s Friday night, I¡¯ve got a mouth on me and we could get some food in, I fancy Chinkeez, what about you Da?"

    "Yeah, I could strangle a chow mein and special fried, and I could get a pack of McGargles in and a bottle or two of pop," I agree as we head back towards the Slievenamon Road on the way to Dunnes Stores, "You in with us, Etain? As a ¡®welcome home treat¡¯?"

    "Aye, I thank ye for your hospitality, Richard."

    "Think nothing of it. Now, what¡¯s your poison?¡±

    "Poison?¡±

    ¡°Drink, hooch, tipple, cocktail, mothers¡¯ ruin?"

    ¡°Giggle juice,¡± throws in Caoimhe. I glance at her very briefly. ¡°Well, that¡¯s what my friend Maria says her babysitter calls beer. Anyway, there¡¯s always poteen.¡±

    ¡°And what would you know about poteen, young lady?¡± I ask, trying to sound stern but realise I am probably smiling at her in the rear view mirror, which she can see clearly.

    ¡°I know and everyone I know knows that Percy Purcell has a copper still in the shed in his backyard, even the Garda collect their regular supplies of ¡®Percy¡¯s Potch¡¯ in the squad car."

    "Actually," I admit, "it¡¯s top notch potch, but with ¡®Madam¡¯ here with us I¡¯ll need to stock up with Coke anyway ¡­ unless you¡¯re a fan of Pepsi?"

    "Mmm, I do like a little honey wine to pick me up in the wet and cold and I have a little pot still back ¡­ where I used to live, for the distillation of aromatic spirits for making lotions and medicines."

    I was surprised that such a young girl would know such things but this is Ireland and if there was anywhere in the world with an affinity for distilling close to the reputations of Tennessee, it was Ireland. And Percy¡¯s Potch really does make a mean Martini.

    Dunnes Stores is a big store that stocks a fantastic food hall, but also household goods, lighting, linens and towels and an extensive range of reasonably priced casual clothing, when you consider everything in Ireland is expensive, but prices are relative and Dunnes is a popular shopping destination and not just for, as Caoimhe put it, ¡®messages¡¯, the groceries.

    I hate shopping, while Caoimhe loves shopping, she was born to it. She never knew her Mom, of course, but this love of shopping must be in her genes because Ella simply loved shopping. She was a delightful girl, an irreplaceable wife, who lived an existence of continual delight in everything she did; if there was one thing she admitted to hating was shopping with me. Don¡¯t get me wrong, she delighted in shopping for me and most of my favourite clothes that I¡¯ve since worn almost to rags were bought by Ella for me, but if she could, she¡¯d leave me at home for shopping trips. Recently Caoimhe has been putting Ts and sweats in my size in the trolly for me and I¡¯ve had to draw the line at shorts and socks.

    So at Dunnes I watch Caoimhe and Etain interact.

    My daughter knows where everything is in Dunnes, even when the staff move stuff, she has an instinct where the store puts stuff. If the pickles aren¡¯t in what I¡¯ve called ¡¯the pickle aisle¡¯ for years, I have to ask the staff; Caoimhe just says, ¡®I bet there over there¡¯ ¡­ and they are, every time. It¡¯s a good job I¡¯m not a gambler or Etain would have had new neighbors by now.

    The girls have their heads together in the food hall, whispering and laughing as they examine loose veggies and fruit, or sniff at ¡¯erbs. Etain asks for an ingredient and Caoimhe¡¯s off, Etain follows and I try and manoeuvre the increasingly heavier cart around the store.

    It seems like Etain can¡¯t read very well, because some things she picks up, to check out, she holds the wrong way up. I wonder if she¡¯s dyslexic or is partially sighted, but her eyes seem extraordinarily exquisite, a pale blue like the sky.

    At the checkout it all adds up and some of the shopping I see is for us, for me particularly even. I keep the receipts in case anything clothing-wise for Etain could be taken back if she¡¯s unhappy with them. I am conscious that Etain is student-age and may not have much in the way of financial resilience.

    We open the door of our cottage first, to get the frozen stuff stored away, then we visit next door using my back door key into Katie¡¯s kitchen.

    I try to hand the key over to Etain, but she points out a bunch of spares hanging from a cup hook on the kitchen dresser.

    It is dark, the switch ineffective, the power has obviously been cut off, but I use the torch facility on my cell to check the fuse box out in the hallway under the stairs, but it is clear that the power needs turning on by the power supplier.

    "That decides it, Etain," I say, as soon as I get back to the kitchen, but Caoimhe holds her hand up.

    "I¡¯ve already told her, Dad, while you were checking the fuse box, she¡¯s staying with us tonight in the spare bedroom."

    They have already lit candles in the kitchen but it is dirty and cold in there. No, she can¡¯t possibly stay here overnight.

    "And you can call round in the morning,¡¯ Caoimhe continues, "and get the power on because you¡¯re good at that, Dad."

    Praise indeed.

    "Sure," I say, "we¡¯ll take these bags of messages back and I¡¯ll order in a set meal of Chinese for four, that should fill us up."

    "Yeah, like for an hour," Caoimhe says.

    Yup, she¡¯s a modern girl my Caoimhe the Diva, aged well beyond her 10 years, she¡¯s a modern girl in a modern world. I¡¯m just not sure that our new neighbor is, as they say here all the time, ¡®not the full shilling¡¯.

 Chapter Three THE TEASPOON

    Almost as soon as I offer to put my new neighbour Etain up for the night or until the electric power to her cottage is restored and the place aired and cleaned up, I realise that the spare room I have offered for her use is filled with what Caoimhe would consider ¡®junk¡¯. But to me all that stuff is my stock in trade, made up of broken servers which I could strip for spares, Ethernet leads, connectors, screens, printers, manuals and files. We did have some limited storage in the house but mostly that store is a tiny room upstairs next to my daughter¡¯s bedroom, and only accessed through her room, next to her own little bathroom in the sloping eaves of the cottage.

    Our pair of cottages was originally one single storey cottage built, as far as our former neighbour Katie knew, about 200 years ago as a single room 20 foot square, withwalls made of mud, cow dung and straw topped by a straw roof, sitting in arable land of about four acres. By 1870, which was how far back the local history society had transcribed old rent books donated to the library, it was then stated the pair of cottages was now 80 feet wide, 20 foot deep and equally split into two dwellings down the middle, although the land had been split with three acres on Etain¡¯s side and one acre on ours. The actual deeds of the property dated only from 1922, the originals presumably lost and needed to be submitted for registration to the new Irish Free State.

    According to the deeds, by the 1920s the original walls had been lined with concrete render and the straw roof replaced by concrete tiles. Each cottage had incorporated a shared porch in the front and a butted up kitchen scullery and bathroom/privy across half the width of the back.

    As newly-weds my wife and I wanted to move out of Cork to somewhere within an hour of Cork and Ella fell in love with this cottage even though it was an hour and twenty minutes away from my work by train. It was very reasonably priced so we mortgaged ourselves up to the hilt and were able to finance sufficient to built into the loft space. This extra room upstairs becomes our master bedroom with en-suite bath and second bedroom with en-suite power shower and storage space in the eaves at the end. Downstairs we knocked down the scullery and across the 40-foot width built in a new kitchen, a garden room and downstairs bathroom. The original sitting room had doors leading to the front door and porch, the kitchen and the original bedroom, which was turned into a spare room with a double bed and fitted wardrobes.

    Etain¡¯s cottage next door had replaced their scullery with a new 20 foot square kitchen but is still a single storey one-bedroom bungalow.

    Our spare room is regularly used by my parents, every summer they would come over for two weeks from Florida, booking outside the normal school holidays to catch cheaper fares. My eldest sibling Monica and her two children came every other year, all she could afford since her divorce in 2015. My brother Don, his wife Lou and two young boys come here for between 5 and 10 days every summer.

    But these visits were planned in advance and I was always able to clear out the accumulation into the storage behind Caoimhe¡¯s room in plenty of time for those visits. I had blow-up mattresses for the children but quite often, if the weather was good, they were happy to camp out in a tent on the lawn in the back yard.

    ¡°Right," I say, as we enter our part of the building, ¡°Caoimhe, if you order the Chinese food for us first, then show Etain around the place and put the kettle on for tea, while I clear out my rubbish from the spare room and put fresh linens on the bed.¡±

    There, I¡¯ve admitted that most of the stuff I keep in there is rubbish. The truth will seek us out, they do say.

    I run up the stairs to fetch the folded cartons I keep for the purpose of storage, a roll of tape and a Sharpie, actually a locally-made magic marker. When I get downstairs, while I was looking out the packaging and Caoimhe ordered the take-out and made the tea, Etain had already tidied up the room on her own.

    I am speechless, the bed itself, usually the first drop-off point for additions to the room, is clear and looks freshly made. Along the wall furthest away from the front window, the servers are stacked together, as are the half-dozen flat screens, the manuals and files together, discs in two stacks, and the leads neatly rolled and on the floor at the end of the stacks.

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

    I manage a stuttered, "How¡­?"

    To which Etain replies with a smirk, "A woman¡¯s work is never done ¡­ and I mean never done by halves, Richard. I¡¯ve been doing housework all my life. Leave the boxes there, I¡¯ll pack them up for you after tea."

    "No," I insist, "you¡¯re a guest here. So, Caoimhe and I will pack them up and take them upstairs."

    She smiles, "Why don¡¯t we all help clear that stuff away? We¡¯ll get it finished quicker and I won¡¯t feel uncomfortable being waited on when you are already being kind enough to allow me to stay."

    "Excellent idea, Etain," chips in Caoimhe, "Food¡¯s ordered and on its way, Dad."

    "Great," I say, "I¡¯m starving and, as we look out crockery and cutlery in the kitchen, you can tell me why there are only four teaspoons in Katie¡¯s kitchen when the rest of the silverware is in sets of six?"

    Etain laughs, "Ha! You looked!"

    "Of course I did, that¡¯s why I¡¯m asking for the reason. You do realise that those spoons are Georgian Sterling silver?"

    "Yes, I do. Samuel Neville of Dublin made them in 1813 for a wedding present for er, one of Kaetlynn¡¯s ancestors."

    "So why are there two missing spoons?" I ask.

    "When Kaetlynn¡¯s ancestor was married and lived in Clonmel two hundred years ago, it was a lively market town where she was friendly with a group of other housewives in the town and they used to have afternoon tea and a wee bit of gossip every day during the week on a round robin basis. They visited each house in turn as they all had nannies to look after and occupy their young children. Then our ancestor¡¯s sister came to stay with her for a few weeks before departing back to where she used to live. The tea-imbibers happily welcomed the young spinster woman temporarily into their midst. Unfortunately the poor girl suffered from an affliction that caused her to collect small mementoes of her stay in the manifestation of stealing teaspoons, which were obviously handed out with each cup and saucer of tea. After a week or so of this, the servants in each household noticed they were missing silver teaspoons and the culprit was soon deduced but not accused directly. These were genteel women after all. Kaetlynn¡¯s ancestor confirmed to her friends that her kitchen cutlery drawer had a number of extra spoons which tallied with those missing. As the sister¡¯s stay was of short duration, the kind ladies decided not to accuse her of anything but to keep her engaged in conversation on her last day during afternoon tea, while the ladies sneaked off one by one to the kitchen to pick out their own spoons and take them back. It worked well, but when our ancestor checked her drawer, she found only four teaspoons."

    "It sounds like your ancestor¡¯s sister was a kleptomaniac." Caoimhe suggests.

    "Yes, I assume she was. And there was, of course, the silver spoon that the sister kept on the last day," Etain smiled, "but one of the other wives must¡¯ve taken the other missing spoon. So, for about 200 years that set of cutlery has only had four teaspoons."

    "What a fascinating story!" I say.

    "There¡¯s more," Etain grins, "even more unbelievable."

    "Go on," Caoimhe urges.

    "My aunt Bebhinn inherited the condition of stealing spoons and she had also inherited one of the two missing spoons from the spinster ancestor and, when she moved into this cottage next to aunt Kaetlynn, my aunt found that her teaspoons kept disappearing. Bebhinn used the spoons to stir the honey from her many hives into her tea. Nobody locked their doors in those days, so when Bebhinn tended her bees, Kaetlynn would sneak in and steal her spoons back from her sister but always leaving one for Bebhinn to use when she drank tea on her own at home."

    "That is so sweet," Caoimhe coos, "the love of sisters."

    "It is," agrees Etain with a sweet smile playing on her lips. "Then, when Bebhinn decided to move out and leaving everything behind for Kaetlynn to deal with, rather than return the spoon to her own set, Kaetlynn left the fifth spoon in your drawer for you and your wife."

    "Oh my god!" I exclaim.

    I get up and rush into the kitchen.

    There in the kitchen cutlery drawer was the silver spoon in a spare compartment where we keep odds like spare batteries, the silver spoon that Ella found and treasured as serendipity.

    She used that teaspoon all the time but I never have. It is tarnished now, not used since the day Ella died in the maternity ward, but I had never thrown it away because it was something I treasured as belonging to her. I return to the sitting room bearing the spoon.

    "Do you want it back?" I ask Etain.

    "No, you keep it," Etain smiles sweetly, "Kaetlynn had second sight, it sort of runs in the family, and she must¡¯ve seen the tragedy in your young lives. I think that¡¯s why she wanted you to have this property and she cut the price so that you could afford it. The spoon was left to give your wife some comfort. She used it all the time, didn¡¯t she?"

    "Yeah," I croak, "she did."

    We are quiet for what seems like hours but is maybe 30 seconds before a tiny, soft voice asks, "Daddy, can I have the spoon to use for my tea?"

    "Of course, sweetheart, it is something of your mother¡¯s to treasure. I should have thought of that myself."

 Chapter Four THE BUZZING SKEPS

    Our ordered take-out arrives before we clear any of my garbage from the spare bedroom downstairs. As a break from my cooking, a regular couple of Friday treats a month for Caoimhe is to dine on a take-out ordered in.

    It arrives hot and ready to serve and means that there¡¯s only a couple of plates and sets of cutlery to load into the washer, no pots or pans to bother with and no missing ingredients that I didn¡¯t know were missing until well into the food prep. Yeah, it happens a lot, we have had some odd dinner combos over my daughter¡¯s short life. So I guess take-out every other Friday is a real treat for us both.

    Today it is Chinese food from Qian Kee, always generous portions and this evening it seems that Caoimhe has cell-ordered enough for three that is actually double our normal order, including a couple of dishes we¡¯d never included before.

    We only have a small breakfast table in the kitchen, the house is still small even after extending it to more than double its original size, so the dining area is in a corner of the kitchen and what you would call cozy, especially with little table-top space left for plates amongst all these aluminum cartons. After I fill up three glasses of water from the kitchen tap for us, there was little space left for elbow room.

    I always use chopsticks for Chinese food, I was brought up using them naturally back home. El used to eat Chinese from a blue porcelain bowl that sits in the dresser long unused, because I was brought up to use round dinner plates. Caoimhe is strictly a right-handed fork user for everything except soup, a habit formed copying me at home before they unsuccessfully tried to reeducate her in Irish two-handed table manners at school dinners.

    Yeah, school dinners not lunches, that gets me every time. Over here in Ireland¡®lunch time¡¯ in the middle of the school day is always referred to as ¡®dinner time¡¯; now that¡¯s Irish, who would¡¯ve guessed?

    So, Caoimhe sets the table with the plates and cutlery, I get my chopsticks and Etain is given a fork to use. Our guest watches me with interest as I overconfidently grapple with a sweet and sour pork ball completely dunked and redunked until completely smothered in sweet sticky sauce with my favourite chopsticks and promptly miss my mouth completely and drop it with a sloppy ¡®plop!¡¯ into my lap.

    Smooth, Richard, really smooth. Show up the whole family to a stranger as damn slobs why don¡¯t you?

    Of course my daughter thinks my clumsiness is a total hoot and makes no attempt at maintaining any decorum in front of a stranger.

    Caoimhe almost spits out her mouthful of masticated egg noodles, swallows it quickly and laughs so loud and long that her puffed cheeks are tracked by runs of salty tears.

    Then she laughs even more as I pick up the hot rogue pork ball with the fingers of my left hand and drop it onto my plate like a hot potato and immediately suck my sticky fingers, not so much for the taste but because the lava-hot sugary sauce has really burned my fingers after the pork ball had made its presence felt, and not residing too comfortably I might add, in my lap.

    Etain regards me with an amused look on her face, then she looks at my helplessly amused daughter and she starts to laugh herself.

    "I¡¯ve an ointment in my bag for your burned fingers," she states helpfully between what I have to admit are delightfully childish giggles, "Do you want me to fetch it?"

    "No, I¡¯ll be fine," I reply as I use a paper napkin, rather ineffectually, on spreading the sticky stain on the front of my pants but at least lifting the stained cloth with a pinch of my sore fingertips so the sauce¡¯s heat stops conducting to more delicate parts fleshwise. "I¡¯ll just go change my pants, won¡¯t be long."

    I can hear the unchecked laughter as I ascend the stairs to my bedroom, Caoimhe¡¯s raucous high notes, Etain¡¯s deeper, softer giggles and, probably, punctuated by my daughter¡¯s rhythmic slapping of the table with the flat of her hand, the orchestration clearly a soundtrack to a father¡¯s total self-embarrassment.

    But hey, aren¡¯t fathers put on this earth to amuse and entertain their munchkins and, by association, their sleepover guests?

    I¡¯m only gone for a minute or three. By the time I get back the conversation is more excited than amused between them as Caoimhe is showing Etain something interesting on the tablet that she normally uses for school. They both look up at my arrival and regard me with smiles, of amusement on one side and what seems more like pity on the other.

    Ice cream for dessert or "afters" seems to be a new experience for our guest, she appears in raptures over every mouthful of Murphy¡¯s sea salt flavor, Caoimhe having consumed all the less-adult flavors in the chest freezer without telling me we¡¯d run out.

    After putting the Chinese leftovers away in the frig, for Saturday lunch, no waste in our house ever, and leaving the dishes in the washer for tomorrow, we sit and visit in the sitting room.

    While I had dealt with the dishes, the girls had swiftly boxed up and stowed all my junk from Etain¡¯s room into the storeroom upstairs.

    I watch the news on the gogglebox but the two girls are shoulder to shoulder on Caoimhe¡¯s tablet, talking in whispers, then Etain takes over control of it. Kids today just seem to take tech in their stride. They¡¯re probably playing an educational game.

    It¡¯s a tablet she needs for school, it has teacher/parental controls so it cannot access sites designated for adults, or download commercial games, but some of the educational games for early years do have a certain charm and I was impressed when she first got it programmed at school two or three years ago. It came in handy when school was in total Covid lockdown.

    The kids are supposed to be limited to a certain amount of online time each day, I think it¡¯s six hours a day, but a long time ago when I noticed she was still using it at home during a long lockdown day without having to pause its use for hours at a time, she explained that when her time expired, she was offered a 15-minute extension, which she accepted and, fiddling with the set-up she discovered she could force it to give her unlimited 15-minute extensions ¡­ so much for parental controls!

    Towards Caoimhe¡¯s Friday bedtime, extended by an hour to nine o¡¯clock, the tablet has been put away and the girls¡¯ talk is about bee hives, with Etain promising to show my daughter how to weave a traditional Irish skep in the morning.

    While I watch the news I half-listen to their conversation which is interesting. I never knew that the Patron Saint of Bees was an Irishman called St Modomn¨®c.

    ¡°I¡¯ve never heard of him," I say.

    "He was the missionary that first brought bees to Ireland," Caoimhe says with confidence, looking at me with the chin-up superiority of a youngster speaking to an idiot adult, but she wavers when glancing at Etain¡¯s raised left eyebrow, she rallies with, "we learned that at school."

    Etain smiles gently, quite sweetly, "To be sure, Dominic O¡¯Neill did bring Welsh bees over with him on his return to Ireland, after training as a missionary with St David, but bees were here for at least a hundred bliain before him. And St Gobnait was also patron saint of bees before Modomn¨®c. No wonder Gobnait was spending so much time talking to bees, though, she was the ugliest woman you ever saw, or so people have said about her; her nose was so sharp Caoimhe, your father could have used her face to shave every morning as her nose was a blade as sharp as the rest of her looks were dull. Becoming an abbess of a convent was a necessity for her, it was not by choice.¡±

    With Caoimhe off to bed at nine, Etain wants to retire too, so I look out a new tooth brush for her. While finding that in my bathroom, I quietly remind Caoimhe to lock her bedroom door, with a stranger in the house, which she does without any complaint. We both have our own bathrooms, although her electric pump shower was inside the bathtub.

    Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

    The downstairs bathroom is where the old scullery used to be on the back of the house, behind the sitting room. Once Etain goes to bed in the room on the other side of the sitting room, I retire to my bedroom to sleep. It would¡¯ve felt uncomfortable staying in the sitting room watching TV. Besides I am tired, I haven¡¯t entertained anyone at home since at least six months before Covid changed everything.

    ***

    I wake early in the morning to the delicious smell of fresh baked bread. We¡¯ve never made bread before. I am up before Caoimhe, but then I¡¯m always up before her. I rub the sleep from my eyes and throw on a tee and shorts.

    Etain is in the kitchen, plating up three plates with chopped runny eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, and hot buttered toast. I look at the cooker, none of the electric rings are showing hot which is odd. She looks up and smiles.

    "Good morning, Richard, our break fast meal is nearly ready. Would you rouse Caoimhe, please?"

    "Yeah sure," I say.

    As I turn I see the three place settings are laid with tea already poured in the mugs. I don¡¯t want to spoil it by saying I always have coffee, but, hey, I could put up with drinking hot mud every morning if it means a traditional cooked breakfast that I haven¡¯t cooked for myself.

    "Keef, you up yet, honey?" I hiss through her bedroom door.

    It unlocks immediately, she knows it¡¯s me, as if she¡¯s waited for me to knock. She¡¯s washed, dressed and almost jumping up and down excited as all out.

    "Hi, Daddy," she greets me, kissing me lightly on the cheek with her hands on my shoulders. "I kept my door locked all night and we¡¯re both still alive. Guess we can be a little more cool tomorrow night, huh?"

    "Sure, honey," I chuckle, "I guess she checks out. Breakfast is ready and Etain¡¯s done the whole nine yards."

    We get downstairs and Etain is sitting at the table where she sat last night, we take the same seats as before.

    "Good morning, Etain," I say with a smile, ¡°I must thank you for this fantastic spread. I hope you slept well, you must¡¯ve got up at the crack of dawn to do all this magnificent spread."

    "I always wake at dawn," she smiles in return, "I found the eggs, bacon and sausages in the pantry, the buttermilk for the bread I got from the farm and I can usually sniff out mushrooms in the wood, even this early."

    "Er, wild mushrooms, er, are you sure?" I ask tentatively, knowing I wouldn¡¯t know a mushroom from a toadstool and I¡¯d poison us for sure.

    "Daddy, Etain knows an edible mushroom when she sees one," Caoimhe¡¯s eyes roll back in her head. She¡¯s been doing that to me a lot recently.

    "Aye, of course," ships in Etain, "and I must get some chickens as soon as possible, so we can have our own eggs."

    ¡®Our own eggs?¡¯ I think to myself a little worriedly. It¡¯s been just me and Caoimhe against the world like, forever.

    "So where did you cook all this, the kitchen¡¯s virtually spotless?" I ask.

    "After checking what breakfast foods you had in the pantry, the one with the light in it, there were none of the fixings needed for soda bread. Sure, the bacon and sausage was there, but no blood pudding, so I checked er, Aunt Katie¡¯s kitchen and found some plain flour still sound, lots of dried herbs and of course the soda, so I took a can over to the farm behind us for some buttermilk, which was no problem as they were up just as early with fresh milk to spare and were happy to oblige. Then I passed back homewards through the woods and found the mushrooms. Oh! Guess what else I found?"

    "A faerie ring?" Caoimhe suggested rather hopefully.

    "Almost. I spotted a faerie rath deep in the wood, completely overgrown. And to think Aunt Katie never let on it was there. If I¡¯d known, it would¡¯ve saved me a walk."

    "What¡¯s a ¡®fairy rath¡¯, Etain?" asks Caoimhe quickly.

    "It could be a number of things," Etain replies, "It could be a doras na si¨®g, a faerie door into the Otherworld, or a burial ground, or even a place where a defensive fort was built. This one is big, on a very slight rise, with fallen stones quite far apart, with hawthorn, blackthorn, whitethorn and hazel planted there, both inside and out, growing so thick that the rath¡¯s well hid."

    "Well," I say, "I¡¯ve not heard any fairy music or seen naked cavorting going on around here. I might¡¯ve been interested in visiting otherwise."

    "And have you been in the woods, deep into the two acres of woods, Richard, all alone, and precisely at the middle point of the dark night?"

    "No fear, I really don¡¯t believe in fairies, but I know what would put the fear up me, and it¡¯s being in dark woods at night. I¡¯m a city boy and those woods behind your place are dark, with slippery deep green moss everywhere. I¡¯d instantly lose my sense of direction and if I slipped over and broke something I¡¯d end up probably haunting the place for the next thousand years."

    "That doesn¡¯t sound so bad, Richard," Etain smirks, "you¡¯d get used to it, I¡¯m sure."

    "But who would look after the munchkin here, while I rattle chains, shelter under a white sheet and howl at the moon like a werewolf?"

    "We girls would be all right, we could stick together, couldn¡¯t we, Caoimhe?"

    "Yes, Daddy, we¡¯d cope," Caoimhe grins at me, "just think, I could have cooked breakfast with toast every Saturday."

    "Every day," Etain says, "gotta start every day right you know. The most important meal of the day."

    "And that, young lady, brings me back to cooking this breakfast," I jump in, "You must¡¯ve used Katie¡¯s cooker. Did you manage to get the power turned on next door?"

    "Power? Only the power of kindling and tinder, Richard. I lit the fire next door, filled the kettle using the spigot like thing in your kitchen, and hooked the kettle on the chains in the fireplace to boil. I mixed the flour, salt and soda with the buttermilk¡ª"

    "From the farm, yes. You know, I¡¯ve never found Farmer Cormack very helpful. I don¡¯t think he likes Americans."

    "Oh, Carrick¡¯s a pussycat," Etain scoffed.

    ¡®So, she knows the farmer and is on first name terms already¡¯ I think.

    "He was getting the cows in ready to milk and I asked nicely and he gave me all the milk I needed. When I mentioned straw, he even pointed out where I could help myself to straw for my skeps, because he usually uses shredded paper in the horse stalls nowadays. Carrick was interested in seeing the finished skeps. Anyway, I¡¯ll keep the fire going next door which means we¡¯ll always have hot water for tea."

    "So you boiled the kettle for the tea on the fire?"

    "Yes. And I put the lid of the oven on the fire to heat up, so after I mixed the soda bread dough I formed it into a ball, the size of a football, cut a deep cross in the top, and popped it into the oven and hung it over the fire and put the heated lid on, covered it in coals, so it cooks quickly, takes about 20 minutes. In the other oven¡ª"

    "Also on the fire?"

    "Aye, there¡¯s one iron bar across over the fire and three chains hanging down, one for the kettle that¡¯s always on, one for the bread and one for everything else. You see, Richard, I don¡¯t need electrickery when it¡¯s daylight and anyone who keeps bees always has candles at night and I have the fire for cooking."

    "The eggs and the toast?" I ask,

    "Soft boiled them in their shells with hot water from the kettle long enough to cook the white but leave the yolk runny. Plated it all up in here, shelled and cut the eggs to release the yolk and toasted the bread on your living room fire which I had lit before I left. I used Kaetlynn¡¯s toasting forks, you don¡¯t seem to have any."

    "I can¡¯t believe how you managed all that," I shake my head in disbelief.

    "I can believe it, Daddy," chimed up Caoimhe.

    "Not only that, Richard, but I also made a start on the first of my skeps, after I found Kaetlynn had set out some blackberry fibres she had already spun into thread. She was always better at spinning than me, and Bebhinn makes better skeps than me but they¡¯ll be grand when they¡¯re done."

    "Well, I think this breakfast is fantastic, thank you," I say, credit due where it¡¯s due, but a young girl taking the old spinster cat lady lifestyle a bit too seriously was worrying to a shallow guy like me.

    ***

    The fairy fort thing is disappointing.

    We visit it mid-morning after I finally managed to get through to the power company to get them to switch it on remotely, but they had to do it from their local junction box and that would not be until Monday.

    So I invite Etain to stay with us Saturday and Sunday nights, which she accepts.

    As for the fairy fort, honestly, it is all moss-covered stones here and there, lots of dense undergrowth and dark trees completely blanking out the sunlight. If there were ever naked cavorting fairies dancing, I wouldn¡¯t even be able to see much of them in broad daylight. As I said, disappointing.

    I warm up the Chinese left-overs in the microwave and we eat more of Etain¡¯s wonderful buttery soda bread for a simple lunch.

    I try to tell Caoimhe how Etain¡¯s soda bread is a traditional Irish method of making bread which does away with laborious kneading the dough and using yeast to aerate the dough before cooking, the addition of acid in the buttermilk reacting with the alkaline of the soda creates the bubbles in the dough and the heat of cooking enlarges those bubbles. "A traditional Irish tradition that has probably lasted thousands of years," I add.

    "It¡¯s not an Irish method at all, to be sure," Etain points out, "it¡¯s from the American Indians. They¡¯ve been using soda for centuries. It was Irish settlers returning home to Ireland that brought the recipe here, around 1830 I think. But we have made it our own ever since."

    I have online work to do in the early afternoon after our lunch, so Etain offers to show Caoimhe how to make skeps. My daughter is keen, so I agree to leave Etain in charge.

    I¡¯m finished checking servers remotely by half four in the afternoon so, before starting our evening meal, steak, corn cobs and hot dogs on the BBQ, I check on Caoimhe. She¡¯s in the next door back yard and I¡¯m amazed, they¡¯ve woven a dozen bee hives between them and set them into the garden wall.

    I just thought it was simply decoration in the dry walling behind the house but there were spaces in the walls in which the funny, round-topped straw bee hives are fitted into. I went over to the nearest to check it out and I can hear buzzing and then I see bees flying out and off to find nectar for the nest.

    "How the hell," I ask, "did you not only weave these hives today, but manage to attract swarms of bees each with a queen?"

    "Oh, we had help from the faeries," Caoimhe says with a know-it-all smirk on her face.

    ¡®Really?" I say, turning away to sort out the evening meal, "and how many of them were dancing naked?"

    "Not a one," Etain replies, with a matching female smirk, "but patience, Richard, it¡¯s nowhere near the middle of the night yet."

 Chapter Five THE BBQ

    It is a lovely sunny afternoon on Saturday, after so much rain on Friday, that it is warm and humid and too nice a summer day to cook indoors, so I offer to have a BBQ in the evening.

    Caoimhe always enjoys BBQ food and Etain says she also loves food cooked outside. I get steaks and sausages out of the freezer and put them in the frig, intending to completely defrost them in boiling water in five or six hours¡¯ time. I have the fixings for salad and I make a mental note to go and get some more ice cream before the evening.

    However, Etain offers to make hot apple hand pies with Caoimhe¡¯s help instead of ice cream.

    "We don¡¯t have any cooking apples," I point out.

    "True," Etain replies, "but I have dessert apple trees with small unripe fruits in the garden,. They can be slow cooked in a pie which will soften the fruit, and sweetened with cinnamon sugar and honey in a simple short crust pastry. I¡¯ll cook them in an oven over an open fire. They¡¯ll be delicious."

    "Daddy, they sound perfect," Caoimhe says, "Etain, can I help make them?"

    "Of course you can," Etain replies, squeezing Caoimhe with a hug, "you can help me pick, peel and slice them, then soak them in water with some lemon juice to prevent browning. We¡¯ll make and roll the pastry, fill up the pies with scoops of sliced apple, fold over the pastry and crimp them. That¡¯s 14 crimps we¡¯ll make for each pie, which is traditionally for luck. We¡¯ll make and cook six pies, one each for tonight which we¡¯ll eat hot, and one each cold for dinner tomorrow."

    "Mmm, sounds great," I say.

    I remove the still-frozen steaks from the frig. They¡¯ve been supplied individually cello-wrapped, bought from farmer Carrick Cormack some months ago. He often slaughters a couple of cows every few months and offers various cuts to the neighbors beforehand at prices far too good to pass up. I¡¯ve always found the ruddy-faced farmer, a solid built man about my age, rather taciturn, but his meat distribution was a tradition and everyone around benefited. I¡¯ve known him, very slightly, for a decade but never exchanged more than a dozen words maybe six times a year in all that time and didn¡¯t even know his first name until Etain met him just this morning.

    Maybe I¡¯m too much of a self-centred computer nerd for my own good and, by extension, to Caoimhe too, who clearly misses female company. That¡¯s probably why she has hung out with Etain most of the day.

    I guess you¡¯re wondering whether I¡¯m missing female company too?

    Sure, I miss Ella, my wife, I miss her like mad. At High School and College I was a complete nerd, and a little overweight for most of my teen years, so I wasn¡¯t much in demand when it came to dating. The only sports I indulged in was softball and wrestling, but never made the college team at baseball and, although I did letter through the wrestling team for two years I never set any records or any co-eds¡¯ pulses race.

    Ella was my one shining light, we just connected almost as soon as we started our courses at Cork, me in computers, while she majored in clothes fashion design. When she was gone, I had my hands full with caring for Caoimhe and working to pay the bills. If it wasn¡¯t for Katie, Etain¡¯s aunt, living next door I would have been lost. I really miss her and I know Caoimhe does even more.

    Katie may have been in her 70s or 80s (I¡¯m hopeless guessing ages, especially regarding women) but she did babysit for the very few dates I went on, starting about two years after I lost Ella. And she was alwys available to collect Caoimhe from the bus stop, give her tea and look after her if I had work late to fix a system or install a new server.

    Katie encouraged me to go out with girls I met on the road visiting clients¡¯ facilities, but my heart wasn¡¯t really in it and I knew it would have to be someone really special to take on Caoimhe as a stand-in Mom, even though my daughter had never experienced having a mother around her before.

    Maybe, I used to think, once Caoimhe went to college, I could find some divorcee or widow prepared to settle down with someone set in their bachelor ways. I was in no hurry.

    Back to thinking about dinner. Normally I would defrost frozen steaks in the frig overnight, but there isn¡¯t time for that, with me intending to start cooking at about 6pm, in about four hours¡¯ time, so I soak the wrapped steaks spread out in a pan of hot water to start them off on a gentle defrost.

    I have a very good marinade recipe for steaks, that my father¡¯s always used on our BBQs back home, which involves some hot chilies. We used to have a lot of BBQs at home and all-year round. Here in Ireland the window of opportunity, or rather my personal primeval urge to cook outdoors, is restricted to a couple of months a year.

    I make up my Dad¡¯s marinade from ingredients I have at hand and set it to one side. Once I was sure the steaks were defrosted I would soak them in the marinade and pop them back in the frig.

    I made sure we had the makings of a salad and selected three potatoes that I would part-cook in the microwave and finish off in the oven nearer the time, aiming for a 6pm dinner.

    I said BBQs are rare for my little family of two and the inconsistency of the weather means that the table and half a dozen folding chairs were never left out in the elements but stored in the garden shed, so I look the table and three chairs out and give them a dusting over to remove the many cobwebs. Was it really that long ago that we last ate outside? Come to think of it, this was certainly the first time we¡¯d BBQ¡¯d this year.

    We have a stock of old glasses stored in the shed, ones El and I picked up from yard sales or jumble sales and put candles inside that when lit help keep the insects away, so I look those out too, polish off the dust and replace the candles that are burned down too low to reuse. We get a lot more insects in the evening than we ever used to get at home, where we have BBQs all year round on permanent and more substantial garden furniture.

    The fence between our two properties is low enough to see over, between three or four feet high. It is an ancient fence of woven osier sticks and each panel seems a different age, as if the fence had been there forever and each panel regularly replaced or repaired as it rotten away from the bottom up. The uprights are a different beast, thick and solid wrought iron bars, not steel or wood as we tend to use back home. These sturdy posts are set in concrete and I do paint them with black exterior paint every couple of years and so they look pretty solid; again they look as though a blacksmith hammered them into shape when the cottages were originally built.

    From where I prep in the kitchen, I can look across to the girls, and they are happily sitting together on a blanket spread on a sunny patch of lawn. They seem happily occupied, playing and laughing at whatever they are interacting with together on Caoimhe¡¯s school tablet. Seeing them so happy together makes me miss Ella more. How she would have loved to have known her daughter, but she didn¡¯t even see her, didn¡¯t hold her even.

    I can¡¯t help but wipe away a tear that had nothing to do with chopping the onions for the salad.

    ***

    "These hand-made apple pies are fantastic," I say, the pie in my hand still steaming, the sweetness of the honey and sharp, fruity acid of the firm chunks of apples perfectly balanced within, "Etain and Caoimhe, you¡¯ve outdone yourselves."

    "Thank you, Richard, but those steaks were really very nice," Etain smiled, "I¡¯m not sure if I¡¯ll eat another mouthful for a week."

    "Ha! There¡¯s nothing of yah," I say, and it is true, I can¡¯t believe how much she had put away, without appearing like one of pythons that swallowed a baby hippo.

    Caoimhe just sticks a thumb up, her sweet face occupied shuffling the hot pie filling around her mouth without burning her tongue or cheeks.

    I relax into the slightly uncomfortable folding chair as the night begins to draw in and I feel a sudden chill.

    "Look, why don¡¯t we retire to the lounge and I put the kettle on for a cup of tea?"

    "Not for me, Dad," Caoimhe stretched one arm above her head and yawned, "I¡¯m knackered. I¡¯m gonna finish this brill pie and then shower and bed. Can we leave the dishes until tomorrow?"

    "Get away to bed with you," I smile, "I¡¯ll sort the dishes after tea and clean up the grill when it¡¯s cool in the morning."

    Two or three weekends a month I used to play golf on a Sunday morning, usually while Caoimhe sleeps in, but since Katie next door departed for her mysterious care home that she didn¡¯t want us to visit some five months ago, I¡¯ve had to cancel my usual 7am spring and summertime tee slot with three friends, because I refuse to leave Caoimhe without someone nearby to keep an eye out for her.

    Katie had been pretty active for an old woman and she was always up and about earlier than me every morning. I thought that if Etain was an early riser and amenable the the idea, I could start playing again in a few weeks¡¯ time once she was settled in.

    To keep fit, I was indulging myself in an hour¡¯s run most Saturdays and Sundays. I probably need a runout tomorrow, those steaks I cooked were huge!

    I tidy up after Caoimhe hugs and kisses Etain and me and goes to bed. She¡¯s 10 and and a ball of energy most of the time, but we rarely have guests and none at all since Covid struck, and when tiredness sets in, she tends to collapse like a pricked balloon.

    Etain helps bring in the leftovers while the electric kettle boils. She makes the tea. Then we retire to the lounge. I take to my recliner and she perches herself on the sofa.

    Ah, that first sip of tea! I feel most of the time I¡¯m still a stranger in a strange land and I drink coffee most of the time, but there are some instances where sitting with a cup of tea just seems right and this is Etain¡¯s own blend that emerged from her cavernous bag when the kettle boiled and she took charge of the little-used 2-cup earthenware teapot that Ella had brought to the marriage from her dorm room all those years ago.

    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    I start the conversation, well, I am supposedly the host and, out of practice I may be, but I feel relaxed, fat and happy ¡­ more comfortable after subtlety undoing the top button of my jeans for relief.

    "Thank you for entertaining Caoimhe today," I smile in thanks to Etain, "I had some remote work to do on the computer and she seemed very happy playing with you on her tablet."

    ¡®Oh, we weren¡¯t playing, Richard, she was using an ¡®ap¡¯ I think she called it to learn how to read English."

    "What?!" I exclaim, somewhat shocked, "but surely¡­."

    "There¡¯s no surety about anything, except everything but the exceptions. I can read runes, I was taught my futhark¡ª¡±

    "Your what?"

    "Like your alphabet, named after the first two sounds in your order of letters, the futhark are the first five letters in the list of runes," she clicks her tongue in a ¡®tsk!¡¯ sound, clearly critical of my ignorance. "Caoimhe explained the alphabet to me very clearly, as did the educational lessons I see on the tablet, designed for 5 and 6 year olds, so I am able to advance quite quickly. I already knew place names from road signs by recognising the overall shape, even if I was unable to break the words down to individual sounds before. Now it all makes sense."

    She smiles a little too smugly, like I imagine a demon might might pretending to be an Angel in disguise.

    I wonder if she¡¯s escaped from an institution or a Traveller family or from some commune hangover from the swinging sixties/seventies/eighties hidden away in some rural backwater in the west of Ireland. Somewhere remote that doesn¡¯t have access to online kindergarten lessons, and no-one qualified to show her how to use them. I think I better ensure Caoimhe¡¯s room¡¯s locked when I go up to bed. I might do that now, as soon as I¡¯ve wound this weird conversation to a close, without making her angry or even vaguely psychotic.

    "She¡¯s wonderful, Caoimhe, isn¡¯t she?" I throw into the conversation, clutching at straws not to upset her, but somehow ease her into accepting that I need to retire for the night.

    Perhaps I could go via the kitchen and contrive to take the knife block upstairs with me.

    I know that anyone listening into my thoughts right now would think, what a wimp, she¡¯s only a wee girl, easy to pick her up and tip her out of the house, or just run. But I¡¯m used to paranoia, I¡¯m from California, the land of the drive-by shooter, the high school multi-murderer, where not only does every second person have a gun at home, they have a back-up too.

    Me? I¡¯m a nerd, I¡¯ve fired a gun before, my father has two pistols ¡­ but they¡¯re kept at the gun club, Mom won¡¯t have one in the house.

    You know, I like Ireland, it¡¯s quiet and the people rarely get angry with one another and if they do they settle their differences with lots of words and at extremes exchange one or two punches, and then they buy each other a couple of rounds of black stuff. This girl worries me but she¡¯s only saying weird stuff, she¡¯s not threatening me.

    "Aye, she¡¯s a very special wee girl, I think I love her already, certainly as much as Kaetlynn does." She smiles wistfully as she speaks of my daughter, her face a picture of calm, a beautiful girl, around half my age that has probably had a deprived upbringing and, inheriting Katie¡¯s cottage and learning to read and how to cope with normal society, well, it¡¯s probably ideal that she¡¯s met up with us when she has.

    She¡¯s harmless, I feel, even if she is off her nut, crazy. I could take her under my wing as almost another daughter and gently introduce her to the world of normal people.

    "So," I ask, how¡¯s the reading going?"

    "Grand, according to Caoimhe she has got me through six weeks of English reading and writing lessons and she¡¯s started me on writing Gaeilge, it¡¯s great fun, but, now, we need to talk, seriously you and me, Richard."

    She drops her smile and looks directly at me with those dark blue eyes.

    Those eyes are disturbing. I¡¯ve never looked directly at her eyes before, well, old men my age try not to look too closely at young girls as a general rule, especially if they are lovely, and even more especially not if they are particularly ugly, unless they are family or lovers, then it doesn¡¯t matter if they¡¯re lovely or ugly. But looking at her here, staring back into my eyes, I feel as though I¡¯m out of my depth, that somehow she¡¯s not the weak innocent young girl, there¡¯s a strength and confidence in her beyond my experience in one so young.

    It is silent for what seems a long time.

    "Er, are you supposed to talk or am I?" I say rather haltingly after a long silent eyeballing.

    She smiles again, god! She¡¯s beautiful and I feel I am in her power, that she could ask me to bark at the moon and I would sit in the garden for night after night until the next full moon and do nothing else.

    "No, you listen, Richard, and I¡¯ll talk, all right?"

    "Whatever you say," I reply, adding, "you¡¯re an enigma that I cannot get my head around."

    "Enigma? What¡¯s that?"

    "Something mysterious that is difficult to understand."

    "Oh, I like that," her smile grows even wider, "but really, you are the enigma. Kaetlynn saw that in you as soon as she met you and your poor wife, and she¡¯s been pressing me to see you and meet with you ever since. Caoimhe too, is a closed book. And I really need to dispel some of the mystery so we can understand where each of us are coming from and where we go from here."

    "Sorry, I don¡¯t understand, are we going somewhere?"

    "Aye, we will be going places, Richard. There are places I will take you so that you will understand who and what I am. But this is difficult for me."

    "What is so difficult?" I ask, I still can¡¯t get my head around what she would want with me. Does she need money? She mentioned something about her aunt leaving her some money in the cottage, maybe she couldn¡¯t find her aunt¡¯s stash of cash and needs a sub?

    It can¡¯t be a relationship that she wants, could it?

    "Well, for a start I have always avoided men¡­."

    Damn, she¡¯s a lesbian. Oh, shite! How safe will Caoimhe be around her if she is?

    "¡­ I was brought up in a household of a mother, six sisters and a step-father who was a spike trader and was often away for a year at a time, so we were all of us females in the family. Because my Mam loved her seventh husband dearly, when he and my youngest sister Dubheasa died of the fever, my Mam never married again."

    "When did your step-father die of fever?"

    "When I was about 10. I loved him so much. He may not have been my real father, I was told at the time, but he loved all of us sisters so much, as if we were his own. His daughter Dubheasa was born two years behind me, was dark skinned with dark brown hair with a hint of auburn and dark brown eyed. She had such a sweet face and sweet nature, I loved her to bits. When I heard she¡¯d died I couldn¡¯t sleep and my Mam was worried that I might die of the grief."

    "Oh you poor girl."

    I want to hold her but I have to hold back.

    "It¡¯s all right, Richard, I¡¯ve got over it, long ago. And it¡¯s fine now, very fine in fact."

    "Well, I lost Ella about the same time, ten years ago and I still find I¡¯m talking to her in the car and pointing out interesting things and catching her up on what Caoimhe¡¯s up to."

    "I think my sister¡¯s death brought me and Kaetlynn and Bebhinn closer together. Even though we all slept together in the same bed¡ª"

    "Wait, you mean you slept with your two Aunts?"

    "I have a confession to make, Richard, Kaetlynn and Bebhinn are not my aunts, they are my sisters and we four youngest sisters all slept together because by then my eldest sister Afric had moved away when I was 2 years old, I barely knew her but apparently she was very dark-haired and brown eyed like Dubheasa too. Caoilfhoinn was 2 years behind Afric and was very fair and red headed, but she was taken by pirates when she was ten and I was 4 and I barely remember her either."

    "Hold up," I say, "you tell me one of your sisters was taken by pirates?"

    "Aye, we lived in the coast then, in Cork, and we often had pirates disturb the peace. Anyway my next sister Alannah was 2 years behind Caoilfhoinn and she died during infancy, before I was even born, apparently she was fair skinned with dark red hair and green eyed I was told. Kaetlynn was 2 years behind Alannah, as you know she was green eyed and blond haired, although she was silver haired during the time you knew her. Oh, she always had a fiery temper and very passionate, she married young and had 3 children by the time we laid the curse on Fionn Mac Cuill and, because the three youngest sisters were cursed to live only on Slievenamon, she could never go back to live with her surviving child again. They came to Slievenamon to visit but she had to watch them grow old and die.¡ª"

    "Time out! Time out!" I cry, "is this a story that you¡¯re writing? Now that you¡¯re learning to read and write. None of this makes any sense. I never knew Bebhinn, because we bought her house from Katie after Bebhinn had already left, to go into a home, I think was said. But Kaetlynn, although we knew her as Katie, she¡¯s in her 80s and you¡¯re 60 years younger."

    "You are right, Richard, to make sense of all this you need to know who we three sisters, Kaetlynn, Bebhinn and myself were and are. That¡¯s why I wanted to talk and tell you. We are Witches and once upon a time we did something together in anger, without thinking of the consequences. We put a curse on a man considered one of Ireland¡¯s giants of legend, Fionn Mac Cuill. We made his lover reject him and run off with the very first man of Fionn¡¯s acquaintance she saw. And, because of that ill-considered curse, the King of all Ireland himself cursed us three sisters to only find rest on Slievenamon, the scene of our shameful curse on his Champion and his favourite daughter. He cursed that we were never able to live anywhere else and unable to sleep anywhere. It was Kaetlynn that found a loophole, that we could find rest in Slievenamon Road, or Drive, or Park or Lane. She bought this land and built this original cottage. When her then husband died she moved back to Slievenamon Road in Clonmel and rented this place out for a century or so. She returned here when she married Piotr."

    "Etain," I interrupt softly, carefully, not wanting to upset this crazy woman, "As I understand it, Katie married Piotr Wisniewski in 1951 or thereabouts. He was settled in Ireland after serving with the Free Polish Airforce during WWII. Katie told me that, his best friend was an Irishman, among many free Irishmen who fought for the UK against Nazi Germany and when his friends returned home to Dublin after the war, he brought Piotr with him. Piotr courted and married the young widow Katie, who lived in Dublin¡ª"

    "Aye, she lived in Slievenamon Road in Dublin and when Piotr wanted to move into the country, she decided to move to Thurles in the same named road, after giving due notice to her renters. And Bebhinn soon moved in next door. Piotr passed in 2008, in his late 80s he was after 57 years of marriage, but Kaetlynn had altered her appearance to look 80, but once she washed out the colouration of her hair she still looks only about 40."

    "And you¡¯re four years younger? I can¡¯t believe you¡¯re in your mid-thirties."

    "True, Richard, but a gentleman should never ask a lady her age, and she will never truly reveal what it is without losing a few surplus birthdays, but I will tell you that I was born around the end of the third century and the beginning of the fourth century, many years before Christianity came to these shores. Instead we were practising Witches who lived by our craft, making and selling potions and foretelling people¡¯s futures. We are blessed with second sight. Are you all right, Richard? You can close your mouth and breathe if you want."

    Damn, I am not all right. I have a mad woman in my house telling me crazy impossible things with such sincerity that I almost believe her. Of course I don¡¯t believe her, I would be crazy myself if I did.

    "Second sight?" I repeat, simply for something to say that will animate my slack jaw.

    "Second sight is the most common tool used by Witches throughout history, telling people¡¯s futures. Sometimes we do it theatrically after a cup of tea and look at the tea leaves, which is all baloney. We read the future or possible futures of the subject during the drinking of the tea. We do it out of habit, we can read anyone, or I should say virtually anyone."

    "Why not everyone?"

    "The exceptions are basically close family, and that means that none of us sisters saw the calamity that befell all of us. And it was seeing Ella¡¯s future and a motherless Caoimhe that had lead to Kaetlynn into selling this house to you and your wife and why she has been asking me to come and talk to you ever since your wife died. I think Kaetlynn started to fall in love with you a little too, she definitely loved Caoimhe, and now what she wants more than anything is for you and me to be together."

    "But why?"

    "Because, Richard, Kaetlynn couldn¡¯t read your future or Caoimhe¡¯s future and, now I¡¯ve met you and known you for 24 hours, I cannot read your future at all."

    "But what does that mean?¡±

    "Hopefully, that you are destined to be part of my family, that you will learn to love me, then ask me to marry you and ¡­" she lowers her eyes and dips her head for the first time since we sat together, "you can help me maighdeanas a chailleadh."

 Chapter Six: THE CURSE

    Chapter Six: THE CURSE

    "You want my help with what?" I ask of this crazy young lady.

    Etain is an attractive young woman in the full bloom of youth, with long black hair, clear skin mercifully clear of acne and the deepest blue eyes I¡¯ve ever risked falling headlong into the depths of.

    She looks at me shyly, which sets me back a little, as the information that had just flowed from her like a ruptured fire hydrant was delivered as if it needed to be relieved from the pressure on her chest. Now she appears a little deflated and rather hesitant and her eyes hooded as though she is reluctant to look me in the eye as she translates her request into words that I can understand more readily.

    "I want you to make love to me, and make love with me, Richard," she whispers, so softly, it is only because a silence had settled between us that I can hear her at all. "You have been married before and you are a father. I was a maiden when cursed on Slievenamon, my life as I knew it ended and ¡­ I am a maiden still, Richard."

    She looks up at me now and her doe eyes are without guile, as innocent and sweet as a child, or, it seems, more as a woman not yet seen in her own eyes as fully integrated into womanhood.

    If she is honest and truthful about everything she has blurted out, confessed?; then maybe the other elements of her story are true too, however completely crazy they sound to my ears.

    I am torn between wanting to believe her and not easily able to even take in what fantasy she has come out with and laid on me.

    I feel like I am in one of those classic cartoon panels you see, featuring a man in the the midst of the horns of a dilemma, with an imaginary Angel sitting on one shoulder and the Devil perched on the other, each urging him this way or the other.

    My instinct tells me to simply get up and run as far away from this girl as possible, but I can¡¯t leave Caoimhe at this mad person¡¯s mercy.

    Oh Damn!

    I need to calm this whole situation down, humor the poor girl and keep my wits about me. After all she¡¯s only slightly built, I can take her if she attacks me. I have height, reach and weight advantage. Yeah, I could certainly take her out, even though I¡¯m a complete nerd and not been in a fight with a girl since back in third grade. OK, I heavily lost that bout to a fat girl who stole my cotton candy at the county fair and I haven¡¯t made a comeback to any kind of confrontation ring since.

    Yeah, Etain is built like a blade of grass. I am in no danger.

    Damn it though, she¡¯s a blade of grass that says she¡¯s a witch. What can witches do? Can she turn me into a toad or make me disappear in a puff of smoke?

    "Will you hold my hand, Richard," she says, a faint smile returning to her lovely, innocent-looking face. "I have the healing hands and if we hold hands you could calm your heart beating so wildly and ease your breathing."

    Yeah, I guess I must look bug-eyed and terrified.

    She holds out both her hands and I respond by grasping them. I instantly feel calmer, my pulse rate slows and I can feel the swollen veins in my temples reduce. I take a deep breath in and breathe out. I wonder if she does have healing hands or that simply human contact with her is enough to soothe me.

    I realise that, since Covid struck all those months ago, Caoimhe is really the only little bit of human skin to skin contact that I have had for about 18 months. Everyone else of my acquaintance has been socially distanced and contact reduced to forearm bumps.

    "So, Etain, tell me more about this curse, er, Finn McCool, the legendary Irish giant, am I right?"

    ¡°Aye, Fionn himself. He was a big man, true, a legendary giant even in his own time, a hero and the King¡¯s champion. He was probably six inches taller than ye, Richard, and almost double your width. He was too big to sit ahorse and used a chariot drawn by two huge horses to get around the place, so. He was the King¡¯s Champion and King Cormac, the King of All Ireland, had it proclaimed around the realm that it was his royal wish that his Champion be married again to sire more giant champions. There were indeed that many requests by maidens and the many, many widows of Ireland, that the King decreed that the bride would be the winner of a race from the foot of Slievenamon Mountain to the peak at the very top, where the prize himself would be found seated to greet the winning maiden or widow.¡±

    ¡°Sounds interesting,¡± I am relaxed enough to chuckle, ¡°was there a big turnout of athletic maidens?¡±

    ¡°Thousands, from wee girls all the way up to widows older than my Mam, who had herself been widowed seven times. They all turned up on the day of the race and were raring to go.¡±

    ¡°Losing seven husbands was bad luck for your Mom,¡± I say in sympathy.

    ¡°They were hard times, Richard, every tide brought a new invader who was fiercer, more determined and better armed that the wave before. This wee green jewel of an isle was the envy of the hungry everywhere, the whole country was an army at war on every front.¡±

    ¡°And what did you and your sisters do to be cursed forever to your mountain?¡± I ask, "Did you cheat in the race?"

    ¡°No!" Etain snaps, "We did not cheat, but there was cheating going on. I¡¯ll just step back to how we, my two closest sisters and I, set out to take part in the race. You see, as well as being Witches and witches are one of those invaders of Ireland many hundreds of years before, we were also great runners. We worked for the King as messengers."

    "Messengers? What, like couriers carrying letters?" I ask.

    "Well, we didn¡¯t really have much of a written language in Ireland then, there were runes but few could read them, and Latin from missionaries or Roman traders. No, it was oral messages for us messengers and, in order to remember a message, that might take three days or a week to get to who it was meant to be going to, we had to commit it to memory as rhymes. We were well used to that as witches, as spells and remedies, the ingredients and quantities had to be remembered, so many of the recipes for our potions were remembered as wee poems."

    "So what were the messages that the King needed to send out?"

    "Orders for men needed for an army, orders for goods, schedules for manor courts, requests for collection of taxes, court rulings on breitheamh law¡ª"

    "What law?"

    "Brehon law was the law in Ireland of the Celtish and Saxon people, which was the common law throughout the island until the Norman king Henry II introduced the Anglo Norman laws about 850 years ago. As a royal messenger my payment was two cows and one heifer a year. Kaetlynn was four years older than me and married with a child so she was paid five cows."

    "Was that good money or pay in kind?"

    "Well, in order to take a message I would have to turn it onto verse so that I could remember it and then when I recited the verse I had to interpret it for the recovery of the core of the message, so between two and five cows wasn¡¯t much when you consider the King¡¯s poet and his harp player were paid 21 cows each."

    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    "Not so good then."

    "No, and life was more dangerous for messengers than poets. We carried a bronze token from our master to guarantee our safety, but enemies of our master might trap us, torture us to get the message or kill us."

    "I hadn¡¯t thought about that," I admit, "so what was the outcome of this bride¡¯s race?"

    "As we were the best runners in the race, we three sisters were out of sight of the others, but as we neared the summit, a girl who was waiting for us, dashed out from cover as fresh as a daisy and ran to Fionn and jumped into his waiting arms.

    "We walked up to the couple, knowing that we had been cheated, and by then some of the other runners came up behind us. They recognised the girl as Gr¨¢inne, the favourite daughter of King Cormac and another runner told us that Fionn was long sweet on the girl. We looked at the couple, the Princess, no older than I, looking so smug that she had stolen the prize from under our noses, while the giant hero Fionn was old, old enough to be my Mam¡¯s Da or Grandpa, with a fat red face, white hair, white beard and a gut so big on him that his chariot would need six oxen to pull him along."

    "So, not much of a prize, then?"

    "No, not a prize at all. But Bebh and I were single, so not too bothered by the prize, but Kaetlynn was a widow and in sore need of a husband. It was Kaetlynn who was better at the spells than either Bebh or I, but we put our heads together and recited a spell which would make Gr¨¢inne fall in love with the first of Fionn¡¯s warriors she met on their wedding morn and elope with him. Immediately we three sisters could see her future, happy with her husband and five children. Meanwhile Fionn was heartbroken and spent years trying to find them, but when he did, he forgave them. But there was no forgiveness handed out for we three witch messengers."

    "No?"

    "No, King Cormac learned of the elopement and some of the runners who knew we were witches and had heard our curse, so we were tried in King Cormac¡¯s court. We were accused and convicted of using witchcraft to ruin the happiness of one of Ireland¡¯s greatest heroes, our defensive arguments about Fionn and Gr¨¢inne¡¯s blatant cheating with King Cormac¡¯s connivance, only succeeded in annoying the judge and we were convicted. King Cormac got his wizard to curse us to remain on Slievenamon for ever more. We could leave but we could only rest our heads and sleep on our return to Slievenamon, if we fell asleep anywhere else we would never wake up again and die."

    "But you were able to move away? You slept here last night, didn¡¯t you?"

    "Aye," she smiles, "and only because we live in Slievenamon Road. We stayed every night on that mountain for many years. Family brought us food and drink and we slept on the mountain and danced as the curse said we ¡®could never sleep anywhere except Slievenamon¡¯. As witches we were always few in number and oft feared and shunned throughout the land, yet we were also needed by every community. For we were expert in preparing protective salves and love potions and poultices, medicines, fortune-telling and midwifery. We could travel to nearby markets, sell our medicines, our potions, Bebh her honey and Kaetlynn her nursing and midwifery skills, but always we had to return to the mountain at night to sleep. Being the swiftest runner, I went much further afield, even stayed out several nights without sleep, using potent herbal draughts to keep sleep at bay, but we were tied firmly to the mountain."

    "So Slievenamon was like an open prison."

    "Aye, it seemed to us to be," Etain says, "but the mountain was also a magical place, all Irish mountains are and there were two cairns on the mountain quite near the top, I wasn¡¯t sure, but I sensed that one of them was a portal to another place, like faerie rings are, but I could not open it. I loved to run and I ran everywhere, kept fit and sharp. But I was young and shy and would avoid people, never engaging, always returning to the mountain where I explored everywhere. I observed the ancient cairns, one of the two in particular I sensed looked like a doorway, a portal into the Otherworld. Then, one night during that first winter on the mountain I found I couldn¡¯t sleep and I ran over and around the mountain under the moonlight to get warm and tired enough to sleep. I came upon one of the cairns being used by a faerie that night to enter the Otherworld. I ran so fast that I entered the portal before the faerie could close the door behind him and I easily avoided capture. I sneaked around the place for a few days before sneaking out again, finally driven away by thirst more than tiredness, for ¡®tis said that if you sleep, eat or drink in the Otherworld you can never leave."

    "The Otherworld?"

    "When the old peoples of Erin clashed with the new invaders, they fought to a standstill, with neither side winning the day but neither wanting to give way. So they held a truce out of which came a signed treaty, where the new people took the Overground, which meant that the old tribes took to the Otherworld, which could be accessed through holes in the ground, or faerie rings, even some tree trunks etc."

    "But wasn¡¯t it dark without moonlight in there?"

    "Naw, within each portal is a short tunnel, but you come out into the open air with wind, rain, sunshine, it is not an Under World at all but Another World, where Kaetlynn and Bebhinn are perfectly happy, now they can eat, drink and sleep wherever in the Otherworld they want."

    "Ah, so it wasn¡¯t a Care Home as such and that is why we can¡¯t go visit Katie?"

    "You can visit, if you want," she grins at me coyly, and laughs, "tell me, Richard, how quick are you on your feet?"

    ***

    We are both tired, Etain with the long breathless telling of her story and me trying to take it all in without blowing my mind. We agree to sleep on it and to renew the conversation over breakfast, which Etain agrees to prepare in the morning.

    I cannot sleep, trying to rationalise what a young woman, appearing to be half my age and double the age of my daughter, is telling me about her past history.

    It make me recall something Ella once said when we were in a pub in Cork, with lots of other students enjoying the craic, when the group were discussing Irish folklore and the question was asked of us all round the table, ¡®Do you believe in faeries?¡¯

    And I had said ¡®Of course not!¡¯ And Ella in her turn said, ¡®I don¡¯t believe in faeries either, but they¡¯re there just the same,¡¯ and everyone, modern young folk all, nodded and murmured their agreement.

    I stuck by my original answer, back then. Now I¡¯m not so sure.

    Sunlight streams through the window and I wake. I smell the bacon, so I get up and go downstairs, after dressing simply in a tee and shorts.

    "Good morning," Etain is cheerful and looking cute in some of the clothing we bought for her on Friday, a lemon tee and white shorts, her bare feet tucked into comfortable slip-ons on the flagstone kitchen floor.

    Sitting on the wooden cutting board is one of the hot black cauldrons from next door, a little bacon-flavoured steam coming out in wisps about the cast iron lid.

    "Is breakfast nearly ready?" I ask, selfishly thinking that I could easily get used to this.

    "Aye, just slices of yesterday¡¯s bread yet to toast. Ye have no toasting forks here so I brought some over, there¡¯s plenty to go around between the two homes. And I brought a jar of Bebhinn¡¯s honey and raspberry jam for the toast, there¡¯s a whole stock of it in the cellar."

    "You¡¯ve a cellar?" Caoimhe calls from the doorway, stood there in her pink unicorn-printed PJs rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

    "Aye, it runs under both parts of the original cottage, but there¡¯s only one entrance. There¡¯s a load of stuff down there, including a still, I think Piotr Wisniewski made Polish vodka similar to our poit¨ªn."

    "Ouuu," Caoimhe begs, "I love attics and cellars, can we explore after breakfast?"

    "Aye of course," Etain laughs, "and ye Da can come too."

    "Not if there¡¯re spiders as big as rats, I won¡¯t," I say, "I¡¯m a fully paid-up nervous nerd when it comes to attics and cellars."

    "Aw, get away with ye, there¡¯s nothing to be afeared of."

    "Is that where you keep your broomsticks?" I say trying to add a little humor.

    "Broomsticks?" Etain queries.

    "Broomsticks," Caoimhe says, coming into the kitchen and picking up a toasting fork and a slice of soda bread, "they are associated with witches, and he thinks witches use them to fly on."

    "Really?" Etain, "I¡¯ve never heard of that before."

    "So, Caoimhe," I say, "you know the conversation that Etain and I were having last night."

    "Well, Dad," she replies, "Etain and me discussed it yesterday. Isn¡¯t it amazing that neither Aunt Katie nor Etain can see our future yet they see everyone elses? That¡¯s got to mean something, if she hadn¡¯t read Mom¡¯s future and found she couldn¡¯t read yours we¡¯d never have ended up living here in this house."

    "You mean that Katie foresaw that Ella would die in childbirth?"

    "Duh, of course, that¡¯s why she dropped the price so you could afford it as well as your plans to make it a family house, so Aunt Katie spent a lot of time with Mom during her pregnancy and was always willing to babysit, because she discovered that she couldn¡¯t read me either and knew that we would be family one day. Only it took her a long time to persuade Etain that she was the one for you."

    I am devastated, not only have I just realised that Etain wants to seduce me, not because I am a desirable hot single man but because she can¡¯t ¡®read¡¯ me, and that she believes I am destined to be her paramour; and secondly that Katie knew beforehand that Ella would die in childbirth before we even moved to Thurles. If Katie had mentioned this to us at the time, maybe we could have changed our destiny by deciding to be childless or took the adoption route and Ella would still be with us?

    ¡°Sorry, you two, but I must go lie down and be left alone to think,¡± I say as I get up and leave the room before the tears become too noticeable to hide.

 Chapter Seven: ELLA

    Chapter Seven: ELLA

    Because I had already tossed and turned all night and still feel unrested, I pull the curtains closed to shut out the daylight and get back into bed. Almost as soon as I lay my head to the pillow, I drift into a fitful sleep, where I dream of my lovely late wife Ella, who was taken from me so cruelly and far too soon in our all-too-brief but blissful marriage.

    I am reminded in my daydreams that I first saw my wife-to-be, Ella Bernadette Walsh, in a Cork pub quite close to the University student dorms. It was back in 2004 when I was a 23-year-old post-graduate student fresh from the USA and she was an Irish freshman on a degree course in Cork. Ella was 19, very smart and training to be a chartered accountant; she was beautiful but shy, wore glasses instead of contacts and hid behind a glorious wall of bright red hair. She was acutely conscious of her supposed puppy fat, that she felt she couldn¡¯t quite shift. Actually, she was the only one that saw any flaw in her, but nevertheless she didn¡¯t really go out much.

    She was from a tiny rural place in the south west and so Cork was the most populous place she¡¯d stayed in without her family around her. However, that night we first met she had been persuaded by her new student friends from her freshman dorm to go to a pub near the campus to celebrate getting through their busy first week of lectures.

    The bar was crowded and noisily boisterous with young drinkers all getting to know their fellow students at the early part of their first Uni semester. That pub wasn¡¯t my favourite bar but I was already a month into my stay here, in a foreign country, far from home, lonely, wondering if coming here to study was as good an idea as I had first thought and I was out looking for company, not necessarily female company.

    OK, I probably was looking for opportunities to get laid. Being a post grad I was three or four years older than most of the bar¡¯s drinkers and I really felt more than a little out of my comfort zone. Back home in the US they all would have been far too young to drink, yet here many were already seasoned teenage drinkers.

    It was Ella¡¯s hair that I noticed first as I ordered a solitary pint for my lonely self from the barkeep and looked around the bar as I waited for it to be poured. Ella¡¯s hair was very red, it was voluminous too, both curly and frizzy and trailed a long way down her back. It shook and shimmered as she spoke animatedly to her new friends, eight girls altogether sitting around two tables pushed together. That table was the main focus of attention for most of the unattached males in the bar.

    All were laughing at what Ella was saying at that moment I espied them. I said she was naturally shy, but she was also bright and brilliantly observant, blessed with a sharp wit, which must have been loosened by more than a few drinks that night.

    All the tables in the bar were occupied, so I stayed at the bar, sipping my relatively warm pint of black stuff, which I was starting to get used to the bitter malty taste of by then, and mostly watching her, fascinated by her beauty and vivacity. She tossed her head around and, although her main focus was on her friends at the table, she took time to look around the room too.

    Male student visitors to their table were a constant stream. The girls were regularly bought round after round of shots, particularly ones that were set alight before drinking and I was actually on edge, seriously worried about her hair catching fire. Maybe she noticed my concern and the close attention I paid her, as I imagined that she often looked over in my direction during the evening.

    She must¡¯ve said something to her friends because, all of a sudden, all eight girls looked around at me at the same time.

    Damn! Now I was the shy nerdy guy who felt embarrassed by the unwanted spotlight.

    I realised that I had naturally struck a pose without even realising; I had my back leaning on the bar and, being tall and skinny, I had relaxed with my elbows resting on the bar counter behind me and one heel nestling on a brass foot rest, so my leg was cocked at a comfortable level, but at sitting eye-level could have seemed a provocative angle.

    Back then I was a brand new arrival to Ireland, it was early October and cold and wet compared to the relaxed post-college California summer I¡¯d left behind me. I had been used to wearing loose short pants and thin cotton tees back at home at this time in the fall, but here in Ireland I was going through a corduroy jeans period, having discovered how thick and warm they were around my core.

    Although I was on a post-grad scholarship, which paid my university tuition fees, while Mom and Dad paid the rent on my tiny apartment as well as stump up the cost of budget air fares, money was still tight. Therefore finding several pairs of snug-fit corduroy jeans in really bright and clearly unpopular colors in a Cork clothing store clearance sale, were purchased out of desperation on my part to keep warm and dry in the late wet summer that Ireland suffers.

    That October evening even my shirt was a thick weave cotton and over that I wore a smart leather jacket that my favourite aunt had presented me with for my 21st, and, of course, I wore my comfortable mid-calf western-style boots. I thought that although I looked a little garish color-wise, it was not too out of place in a bar filled with brightly-enveloped young kids, so I was confident that I looked like an OK dude.

    So, when these eight pretty chicks checked me out, I maintained my pose at the bar as relaxed as I could, gripping my half-drunk pint in one hand, and I gave them my usual crooked smile and a ¡®John Wayne¡¯ two-fingered US-Cavalry salute from my forehead with the other hand.

    Ella later soberly admitted that she thought I looked hot through her "beer goggles" and all the girls on her table had agreed with her.

    I only had eyes for the girl with the red hair, her huge eyeglasses, emerald green eyes and her cute unblemished face, spotted with delightful freckles. If I believed in love at first sight, and now I guess I really do, that was the moment that Ella stole my heart and she must¡¯ve filed it away in her pocket.

    I was too shy to approach the table of course, I was a computer programming and systems nerd. I saw other guys kept buying them drinks and the redhead girl, I didn¡¯t know her as Ella at the time of course, got steadily more and more drunk.

    When one of the booze-buyers tried to pull her out of her chair to separate her from the others in the cute girl herd and probably intending to take her outside, I stepped in.

    I was tall and one-drink-only sober and had a determined look in my eye, so the young guy decided the girl wasn¡¯t worth the risk of expensive dental work.

    All the girls at the table were totally wasted by then and Ella couldn¡¯t even tell me where she lived, so I took her back to my tiny one-person apartment; it wasn¡¯t far but I had to carry her for the last third of the walk.

    She projectile vomited in my tiny bathroom as soon as we got home. I sat on the bathroom floor with her, keeping her lovely hair out of the toilet bowl until her stomach seemed empty. I propped her up in bed with pillows behind her to stop her rolling off onto her back and I slept on the lumpy old sofa that was at least two-feet too short for my sleeping comfort.

    Ella was deeply embarrassed on Saturday morning when she woke up late and alone in my bed and realised she didn¡¯t know where she was or even know my name!

    We quickly made introductions and she was grateful that I had not undressed and molested her. I explained that a belligerent youth had been trying to drag her off and none of her female friends were in a position to do anything about it. She was shocked, but admitted she hardly knew the girls, having only moved into the dorms in the previous six or seven days.

    I plied her with lots of drinking water and aspirin and walked her safely home to the female dorms after a light lunch in a nearby cafe. I managed to get a date with her for a movie on Friday night. One date turned into a string of dates and we soon became inseparable even though we both kept up to date with our respective courses of study.

    I married 21-year-old Ella Bernadette Walsh in 2006, in the Civil Registration Office in Cork.

    I fell for her because for me it was love at first sight, a feeling only reinforced by every waking moment that I spent with her and getting to know the wonderful person that she was.

    I think she only gradually fell in love with me because around me she felt safe, was more confident, funny and her bubbly personality was allowed to be released; she regarded me as her white knight and often called me her pet name of ¡®Sir Richard¡¯.

    As a newly-married couple we rented my flat in Cork for a couple of years, after qualification and, after settling unto local jobs in Cork, her parents Bernie and Bill offered to match the amount of money I had managed to save and we used the lump sum as a deposit on a house.

    We wanted to buy a house in a small town within a hour¡¯s commute by train from Cork, but El fell in love with one half of this pair of cottages on the edge of Thurles, which was between 1hr 17 to 1hr 24 minutes away by train and we were another 4.1km from the town station. She commuted by train to Cork every weekday, while I used our only car to call on customers, where I serviced computers and server systems mostly in the towns across the south counties of Ireland.

    We were delighted to find this old cottage and at such a low price that we were able to raise enough finance credit on the mortgage to extend and modernise it into a family house.

    Then, Ella fell pregnant, which, once confirmed, meant seven months of joyful anticipation and then my heart was broken beyond repair when El died giving birth to our daughter.

    If it wasn¡¯t for our kind neighbour Katie Wisniewski¡¯s offer to babysit at all hours of the day and night for most of the last ten years, so that I could work and hold down a demanding job, I would never have pulled through and brought up my daughter Caoimhe.

    Now I find out that our kind elderly neighbour, who was so helpful while I dealt with the tragedy of losing a wife, and took on the responsibility of a baby to look after, was a witch who had known all along that my lovely wife was going to die and she did nothing about it.

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    ***

    I feel I have lain in bed and grieved more than long enough for today and, looking at my cell phone I find I have been here dreaming of my wife and dozing on and off now for two and a half hours.

    I can¡¯t really blame Caoimhe for mentioning the fateful foretelling of my wife¡¯s timeline, her mother¡¯s death, so candidly. After all, she never knew her mother. She has lived all her life with just a father and monthly visits to or from her Irish grandparents in Killorglin, Co Kerry, and roughly annual visits to or from my parents in California, all in the days before Covid.

    Of course she has fond memories of her "Aunt Katie" next door, while I am now filled with a loathing rage for the woman who knew when my wife would die and yet she kept me in ignorance.

    Why hadn¡¯t Katie warned us that she had read Ella¡¯s future, that she would die in less than two years after we moved to this house? Could Katie have done something about it? If she advised us not to have children; we could¡¯ve maybe adopted. Anything to save my dear sweet Ella. Could Katie at least have prepared me for this tragedy?

    Still, nothing I can do about it now. And I cannot blame Etain for her sister¡¯s actions, she wasn¡¯t here ten or even twelve years ago when we first moved in, she¡¯s only the messenger, and she says that she can¡¯t read my future either, nor Caoimhe¡¯s. I¡¯ve got questions and I need answers and won¡¯t get them lying in bed. Besides, I missed breakfast and it¡¯s getting on for lunchtime.

    ***

    I am met with a girly "Whoop!", then a cry of ¡°Daddy!", followed by a guided missile of pretty solid ten-year-old daughter who hits me head-on in the doorway between the foot of the stairs and the kitchen diner.

    Caoimhe is a continually prodding reminder of Ella, being almost a clone of my dear dead wife. I am not always reminded of my late wife because Caoimhe is a girl with her own personality, but at times like now, when I having been thinking about Ella for most of my dreams and, being awake these past recent hours, seeing the top of her head as she buries her face in my chest, I feel awash with emotion, not all pain or sorrow, nor the regret which is always in the background, no, I am filled with an eternal love for both my girls without question.

    For Caoimhe to even exist, the thought insinuates into my consciousness, then Ella was the sacrifice which made her possible.

    I look up. Etain is in the kitchen, frozen, looking at father and daughter sharing a moment that she is not a part of.

    Leaving one hand holding my daughter to me, I raise the other and stretch it out in silent invitation to our house guest, a guest who promises to be more in our lives than a mere presence. Our eyes lock and she drops whatever unseen cooking implements she holds and runs towards us.

    I smile as she automatically rubs her hands down her apron as she runs, which makes her run like only a girl runs, all hips, the flap of the apron as her knees kick the material up which never has time to settle before the other knee kicks it up again. All seen in the periphery of my vision, our eyes never leaving go of each other¡¯s eyes until the last moment when her smiling face buries itself into my shoulder.

    I clap these two angels to me, one a tiny titian pixie, the other a taller, slightly-built black-haired goddess, and feel two wet spots growing on my tee as the girls¡¯ emotions express themselves in tears and desperate clinging embraces.

    I kiss Etain¡¯s head, then stretch my head down to kiss Caoimhe¡¯s fuzzy top of her head, the action moving Etain a little away from my shoulder.

    Caoimhe looks up, her face wet with tears, "I¡¯m sorry, Daddy, I didn¡¯t think that bringing up Mummy would upset you so.¡­ Etain explained that knowing when someone is going to die when there is nothing that can be done about it is difficult to grasp. It¡¯s like discovering a cancer inside someone you care about that has already got too firm a grip to let go.

    ¡°That she was my Mum, that this thing happened to her because of me being born, means so much more to you, because she was your whole world. But for me she was simply someone that I never knew other than what you¡¯ve told me. OK, I¡¯ve seen the pictures, I have one on my nightstand. I love Mummy, sort of, but she always has been and always will be only a stranger to me."

    She allows a sob to escape before continuing, "You had a wife who you loved enough to have a baby with, me. I¡¯ve never known what it is like to have a mother, so to me her ¡­ loss ¡­ is not something I¡¯ve ever really had to cope with, because you¡¯ve been both Mummy and Daddy all rolled into one for me all my life. Now, hopefully, you will fall in love with Etain and I could have a real Mummy at last.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a bit early for that, Sweetie,¡± I say but, as Etain is also looking up at me without expression on her face, from where she presses her cheek into my shoulder, I kiss them both again, this time on the forehead of each and they smile back at me.

    ¡°Let¡¯s take this one step at a time, my pair of sweethearts,¡± I say, ¡°I need a coffee immediately and then let¡¯s get lunch prepared and out of the way so we can sit down and clear up what is happening to our family and what we need to do about us going forward. OK?¡±

    ¡°Okey dokey, Dad,¡± Caoimhe grins.

    ¡°To be sure,¡± Etain says before reaching forward and kissing me gently on the lips, her soft lips melt into mine, her hand ruffling the short hairs at the back of my head. It is only a kiss for a few seconds, but it feels nice and I feel relaxed as I felt once before when she kissed me.

    ¡°Are you working your magic on me?¡± I ask gently, without censure. Who could ever criticise such a gentle, loving kiss?

    ¡°A little, only a little,¡± Etain admits, ¡°Just to relax and soothe you, Richard. I, or certainly we, upset you earlier with our thoughtlessness and I sense you are still tense and concerned. I want to assure you that I desire only for you and Caoimhe to be happy. My own happiness is secondary to both yours. I think you know what I want from this ¡­ whatever ¡®this¡¯ is ¡­ and I know you have concerns about who I am, what I am, and also about the relationship you once had with my sister, a relationship that has been shaken somewhat by me.¡±

    ¡°I had thought that we were friends, your sister and I, friends who looked out for one another.¡±

    ¡°You were friends, great friends. Kaetlynn loved you both, Richard, you and Ella, and Caoimhe once she arrived here.¡± Etain says, ¡°I know you have concerns that Kaetlynn used you, that she had designs for your future and therefore allowed Ella to die for reasons known only to herself and not divulged to you at the time. Some of your concerns hold a little truth but not the whole truth. Come, you are thirsty and hungry and Caoimhe and I have prepared a vegetable soup for our meal that will be easy to heat up for an early lunch and will lie light on our stomachs while we face a few facts about what has happened in the past and what fantastic possibilities lie in the future, in all our futures.¡±

    ***

    Lunch is as delicious and light as Etain promised, cooked on our electric stove, with Caoimhe having showed Etain how the electric oven and ceramic hobs work.

    Caoimhe and I have often prepared simple meals in the kitchen together as I have played the ¡°Mom¡± side of bringing up a lively and inquisitive girl on my own. She enjoys food prep more than I, which is a bonus for me and I often praise her for the great job she makes of learning to cook, even if I have to do most of the clean-up afterwards.

    After lunch, we sit in the back yard as the day is warm with non-threatening fluffy white clouds in a light blue sky and the back of the house faces due west and therefore benefits from the afternoon sun.

    Summer in Ireland is always wet, which is why the country is so green and lush, but today is one of those dry ones filled with the soft light much more reminiscent of the spring which has become my favourite time of the year in this part of the world.

    ¡°Kaetlynn did not see you and herself as a couple after Ella was gone, Richard,¡± Etain says as we sit comfortably after lunch in the unfolded canvas chairs that I keep dry in the garden shed. Caoimhe perches perilously close to the edge of hers, swinging her legs while rapturously glued to every word that Etain and I exchange. "She tried to talk me into staying with her and meeting you and the baby, but after many years of spinsterhood, I couldn¡¯t do it at that time, I wasn¡¯t ready"

    ¡°Well, I wouldn¡¯t have been interested in romance, even after coping with my loss. Katie was an old woman, in her 80s at least,¡± I guess, ¡°or that¡¯s how she appeared, even if she was really, I dunno, about 1600 years old, you say?¡±

    ¡°She is actually just four years older than I am, Richard,¡± she smiles at me with almost a smirk, ¡°but, she was some twenty years or so behind me in ageing before she first visited the Otherworld.¡±

    ¡°And that made a 60-year difference?¡±

    ¡°No, of course not,¡± she smirks and stares at me intensely and she changed in front of my eyes!

    I sit up in shock at the vision suddenly revealed to me, gripping the arms of my chair and almost rising to my feet until the moment passes.

    ¡°What the hell!?¡± I exclaim, shocked at what momentary change I had seen in Etain¡¯s facial appearance.

    Just for a few seconds, Etain had turned into a white-haired old lady with multiple wrinkles and, just as instantaneously, turned back again into a youthful twenty-year-old brunette.

    It was like a bolt of lightning to my visual senses and a total shock to my grip on reality.

    Caoimhe reacts only to my reaction with, ¡°What¡¯s wrong Dad?¡±

    My daughter doesn¡¯t appear to have noticed any of that momentary change at all in Etain¡¯s appearance.

    Etain turns to her and explains, ¡°I can fog the minds of people, sweetheart, and only fog the minds of people I want to influence. Just for a moment, your Daddy saw me as Kaetlynn allowed you and your father to see her in recent years, looking like an old woman. Whenever I visited here, and that was never once during the twelve years while your father and Ella or you and your father were living here, I would have seen your ¡®Aunt Katie¡¯ as she really was, a beautiful woman in her prime, apparently looking like a forty-year-old who had taken good care of herself. Her sweet husband, Piotr Wisniewski, would have enjoyed seeing her as (and making love to) the beautiful young woman she really is all his life, until he died aged in his nineties, but to everyone else, say the clerk in the post office, or the shop keeper when she collected her messages, would have seen her fogged image, ageing gracefully from her forties through to her eighties during the most recent years that she lived here.

    ¡°That is how she lived anywhere without question over the last 1600 years. She lived in Dublin and in Cashel before that, changing her appearance back to a young woman every fifty years or so as she pretended to be her aunt¡¯s or grandmother¡¯s heir moving into the property she¡¯d owned for centuries. It is how she was able to get away with living here and in other places on and off for the 200 years since she had this pair of cottages built for her and Bebhinn.¡±

    ¡°Is this ¡®fogging¡¯ a magic trick?¡± I ask.

    ¡°If ¡®magic¡¯ is defined as anything that witches can do that you cannot explain by your knowledge of science and matter, then, yes, you can call it ¡®magical¡¯, but for us witches, influencing what people see is perfectly natural, it is what we do. Remember, Witches throughout history are famed for making potions and fortune telling and sometimes we use a little misdirection so that the expectations of our customers are realised. They expect us to look into crystal balls, deal cards or examine tea leaves in cups but we really don¡¯t need to do any of that. Look at that bee over there by the daisies; I can ¡®see¡¯ her future if I want to, just by her closeness; I know where she was flying to today, what flowers she will visit and exactly when she will return to the hive; if I allow myself to delve deeper into her future I can see when she will die ¡­ yes, there it is, I can see the sun is shining and she is nestling into an almost ripe sunflower yielding its last grains of pollen, so it is late summer and she is overcome by exhaustion and she dies there, happy and contented, pleased to have lived a good and productive life. I cannot tell when exactly that will be, I can only ¡®feel¡¯ when it will be. Kaetlynn was able to see your Ella die as she gave birth to her daughter Caoimhe here, it was a clearly identifiable moment in time. Kaetlynn told me that she could see Ella as a young woman, exhausted, in pain but happy that she learned she had a daughter before she passed and was also content that you, Richard, would not be left alone. She loved you and gave you the greatest gift that she could possibly leave you.¡±

    ¡°Oh, my God,¡± I murmur.

    Etain and Caoimhe hold my hands.

    ¡°She knew, Richard,¡± Etain says, ¡°Yes, she knew that she would die in childbirth, Kaetlynn had spoken at length with her, to confirm a feeling Ella already herself felt, and she still went ahead with planning for your baby and bearing your child, because she loved you both that much.¡±

    ¡°She knew?¡± My tears start flowing unchecked, my chest heaves with unbidden sobs. I stand up, seeking some unknown place where I can hide my emotions or run far enough away that the pain in my heart would fade, and the two girls embrace me, hold me there.

    I am powerless and let them hold me as in my mind I relive that dark night in the maternity department of the Clonmel General Hospital, where my soulmate died, and the baby we created lived to try and fill the unfillable void that still exists in my heart.

    Now I have to live with the thought that Ella knew what would happen to her all along and realise that she had prepared me for this eventuality by insisting that I attend every pre-natal clinic during her one and only pregnancy she was destined to bear.

    It is almost too much for my poor heart to bear, but I am strangely grateful that with Caoimhe and Etain here with me I¡¯m not facing this agony alone and somehow I also feel that maybe Ella is still watching over me and caring for me as I still care for her.

 Chapter Eight: TALK OF THE OTHERWORLD

    Chapter Eight: TALK OF THE OTHERWORLD

    ¡°Tell me about Kaetlynn?¡± I ask of Etain.

    Once we are sitting back in the canvas garden chairs and wiped the tears from our eyes, I am interested to find out more about my former neighbour and what influence she had on my late wife and why she appeared to desire some future relationship between Etain and me.

    ¡°Kaetlynn was frustrated by the King¡¯s curse which banished we three sisters to that bleak mountain all those years ago. She was the only one of us that was widowed, had lost two children and a husband, and left with a young child to raise on her own. She wanted a new father for her son and desired yet more children to follow."

    "So why were you and Bebhinn in the suitors¡¯ race for the hand of Finn McCool?" I ask, knowing only very little of the legend, "Were you both after a husband or just taking part to support Katie?"

    "Aye, it was mostly to help Kaetlynn win the race. Neither Bebhinn or I were interested in marrying Fionn or anyone at all. I was a messenger with the King, a calling I was the best there was at; Bebh had started out as a messenger before me but by then was more interested in keeping bees and making medicines based on honey. Kaetlynn had started out as a messenger at 12 years old like me, but she married young, to a coastal dairy farmer who she was sweet on. They had had three young children, but the two youngest had only recently been killed along with her husband. Deaths were common in babies, even with witch medicine and witchs¡¯ healing powers, but a witch can do nothing about pirates and marauders. More Irish people were killed by invaders back in those times than died by natural causes. Kaetlynn as a mother had became in demand as an experienced midwife and she was away from her farm that fateful night, staying in the nearby town with a woman in labour. Her eldest boy was about 5 at the time of the curse and he had the sense to run away and hide from the pirates. The babies and husband perished as the farmhouse was burned to the ground."

    "Poor Aunt Katie," murmurs Caoimhe, in sympathy with her once babysitter.

    "Aye," Etain agrees, "She was never the luckiest of us. Any woman found it as hard to raise a child on her own, just as you did, Richard. Kaetlynn was aware of that as she helped you with Caoimhe whenever she could. Kaetlynn had given up being a runner, a king¡¯s messenger, before us in order to marry and work the dairy on the farm as well as her midwifery.

    ¡°Bebh and I helped keep her pace up as we ran up the mountain path in that race and we were certain that Kaetlynn would thereby win the hand of the great hero, until that bitch Gr¨¢inne appeared from nowhere and neither Bebhinn nor I could catch her, we were so puffed by then and she was fresh as a daisy covered in morning dew."

    "So you hatched this ¡­ spell was it?" I ask.

    "A witch¡¯s curse can be a powerful thing, Richard, especially when delivered with the passion we had conjured up between us in our disappointment and anger," Etain reflects, "Not every witch can curse to make something momentous happen, but Kaetlynn was the best curser of we sisters able to do that, but with all three of us working out the best phrases for the curse, and Bebh¡¯s heady, sweet and persuasive concoction of honey and beeswax perfume, we successfully persuaded Gr¨¢inne and one of Fionn¡¯s righthand warriors, that they were completely in love with each other and they immediately eloped during the wedding breakfast."

    "But you didn¡¯t actually get away with launching of this curse?" I state, knowing the answer.

    "No, Richard. We didn¡¯t but then we didn¡¯t care if we got away or not. We wanted to right an injustice. In truth, Gr¨¢inne was happy with her new mate and their new life. They had five children and lived long lives together. It was a powerful curse and the couple were in love with each other for life. Even Fionn saw the funny side of it during the brief Court hearing, I suspect that it was Gr¨¢inne herself who had paid for a love potion of her own to help her woo the great hero himself to desire her heart and body, but her potion was nothing at all to the power that we three sisters together could bring to bear," Etain laughs.

    "Remember, Richard, witches cannot use potions or magic to influence a man to love them or even to love a close relative, especially someone who is linked to the witch in either a known or as yet unknown way. A witch¡¯s prayer is only that, a prayer, a hope, we cannot use magic specifically to benefit ourselves. Even if we try, it simply won¡¯t work, it is a Witches¡¯ Law that cannot be broken."

    ¡®OK,¡¯ I think, ¡®this witch can relax me with a touch or a kiss, but still leaving me aware of her effect, but then Ella could relax me or excite me simply by a look or touch, it is chemistry not magic; being with Caoimhe and seeing her grow and learn to develop into a confident and rounded person, also affects me emotionally. Seeing a pretty girl in passing or witnessing something humorous seen in everyday life can also please or antagonise as they occur. Those are organic reactions, so I don¡¯t feel at all threatened by anything Etain makes me feel. Do I accept that she is a witch and can do what withes can do? Yes I do. The bee hives appearing by magic, the tidying up of my junk, the well-being that I¡¯ve been feeling in these last two days, even allowing for the shocks they are making to my system, make me believe in and respect her power. Oh, I¡¯m not sure if it was anything to do with her, but I remember the karma on that truck driver, the one that splashed her two days ago, being brought down with the runs, well, it seemed to me like Etain either foresaw it or ¡­ oh damn, that possibility doesn¡¯t bear thinking about! Do I feel that shewill have a positive influence on my future and more importantly Caoimhe¡¯s future? Yes. Even though I have only known Etain for two days, I find myself happy about her being involved in our lives. I almost regret having offered to call the electric company tomorrow and having to face her moving back to Katie¡¯s, now her, home.¡¯

    So many thoughts, such that I haven¡¯t entertained since Ella left and I¡¯m now worried that if this ¡­. whatever this is I¡¯m feeling ¡­ doesn¡¯t work out.

    We are still relaxing in the back yard, talking about those distant olden days of Ireland¡¯s history, sitting in the sunny back yard of our ancient cottage. The bees lazily humming and floating back and forth to the new hives set up only hours ago yet they seem as though they¡¯ve comfortably been sitting there making sweet honey in this idyllic spot for ever.

    I look over at Etain and pull myself out of my reverie.

    ¡°So, the Hero of All Ireland wasn¡¯t too put out by the curse, then?¡± I ask, happily grinning.

    I watch Etain who appears lost in thought herself, no doubt also deep in memories. She¡¯s probably sending her mind back to the mountain of Slievenamon all those years ago, long before Irish history was ever written down, a dark age of romantic conjecture and mysterious myth for us living in the modern age but once all too real to a young maid whose life was irrevocably changed through a princess¡¯s desire to marry an old and worn-out hero.

    "Ha!" Etain resumes after her long pause to think. "Fionn was in his cups on honey wine, while we sisters were lashed up together on the beaten earthen floor at the side of the King¡¯s great hall and denied food, drink or even the basics of creature comforts. It was the King out of all present that was most angry at us! He could do little to punish his wayward daughter Gr¨¢inne, who caused him such embarrassment, she was already away on the road with her new lover long before the guests had been served their wedding breakfasts. He had immediately sent patrols out searching, but Gr¨¢inne managed to elude capture for many years. Of course the king knew Kaetlynn, Bebhinn and me very well, hadn¡¯t he told the three of us in turn his most secret messages of trade, politics and intrigue for the past seven or eight years?"

    "You were all messengers?¡± Caoimhe asks.

    "Our mother was once a messenger, a fine runner she was all her life. We children were nippy runners, but we were also poets who could render the King¡¯s message in verse and learn the lines exactly and deliver them as quickly and accurately as possible to the recipient."

    "So there was no hiding and getting away from the King as Gr¨¢inne managed?"

    "Not a chance. Even Gr¨¢inne knew who we were, as did most of the courtiers around us. So King Cormac summoned all his advisors and the other witches in his employ that he knew would all be jealous of my family. Thus we were convicted by a hastily drawn up court with King Cormac determined to curse us to live on Slievenamon forevermore and forget about us until the sun eventually bleached our starved bones. Sadly, we couldn¡¯t have Kaetlynn¡¯s surviving child living with us, as there was no furl for a warming fire, no shelter and nothing there but bare rock to build a decent shelter with, nothing even to forage for us to eat and only brackish streams to quench our thirst."

    "You were just left exposed on the mountain, merely for exposing a couple of cheating lovers?" Caoimhe says, a little incensed.

    ¡°Aye. Starved and abandoned we were, by a vindictive king who we had previously served well. He was mostly a wise king but where his favourite daughter was concerned he was blind to reason, blind to her cheating. We¡¯d hoped all his messages went astray and his darkest secrets cried loud throughout the land. Our family and friends slipped past the guards and brought us food and drink after dark and we slept on the mountain and danced together at night as the curse decreed that we ¡®could ne¡¯r sleep elst ¡¯cept Slievenamon, elst thee¡¯d three¡¯d ne¡¯r wake a more¡¯, and, as you can imagine, all young and healthy witches love to dance in the moonlight."

    I laugh, "Of course you do!"

    "Poor Kaetlynn," Etain continues, "was, however, completely distraught, and she cried night after night as she mourned so for the loss of her only surviving child, she missed him so. Our mother, the powerful witch Sabhadama, well, she could do naught to mitigate the King¡¯s curse but was an angel to us nonetheless. She would travel up from the coast and bring Kaetlynn¡¯s boy Feimhin to the Mount several times a year, to visit with us for at least a day and a night. Others living near the mountain took pity on us and brought us food and drink. We thanked them with fortune-telling and medicines, but mostly making love potions for them."

    Caoimhe makes "kissing" noises with her lips and laughs and we both join in the fun. Never in my life had I expectations of having so much fun talking to an avowed witch, but Etain is a fun person to be with and I find that her story is absolutely fascinating.

    "Really?" I ask, between giggles, "Love potions? And you a, a¡­."

    "Virgin?" Etain grins at my embarrassment, "Is that what you¡¯re asking me now, Richard?"

    "Well, that¡¯s what you said you were last night," I counter as quietly as I can, conscious of my reddening face, with my big-eared daughter hearing and understanding every single word and yes, I can see Caoimhe is looking at us both with an unreadable expression on her innocent but very attentive face.

    "Aye," Etain agrees, "I did admit that to you yesterday when you so cruelly shrugged off my amorous advances, and with so little consideration on your part for my hurt feelings.¡±

    ¡°Hey, I¡¯m a confirmed and determined single widower with some standing in this community, I never, ever, get involved in virgin territory.¡±

    Caoimhe giggles behind her hands, while Etain rolls her eyes, rather cutely, I notice, damn it!

    ¡°Bebhinn and I were both wee maidens when we ran that damned mountain race and not-so-wee maidens we both still remain. Of Bebhinn¡¯s state I am certain as she was always ever so determined, and though I love her as a sister, even I have to admit she is the plainest in her looks of all my sisters and her bees care little for a girl¡¯s looks when generously sharing their bounty. As for my own state, well, you know my position on my maidenhood, Richard, I have already staked my claim in that regard.¡±

    She smiles at me before turning her attention to the entranced Caoimhe who is hanging on her every word. ¡°Love potions are not just an anonymous mixture of sweet-smelling plants, you know, my girl, the ingredients and even the process of mixing all the parts together differs each time. Each potion has to be matched to the intended couple, so it works on them both, to entice them each to look inward and outward and to fan any spark at all that might exist between them. No spark betwixt them, however, means no burning flames of passion, but even an unsuccessful potion makes both targets open and accessible to another who might be drawn in to see one or the other of the intended targets as a potential lover."

    She then matches Caoimhe¡¯s giggles and tries to suppress hers with her own hand but the laughter from her lips and sparkling in her eyes escapes to torment me further in my observations.

    "Love potions are powerful things," she insists, "that are not to be trifled with. But also, no love potion really ever goes to waste."

    "They¡¯re not quite like ¡®smart bombs¡¯, then huh?" Caoimhe says, her eyes bright with the way the conversation is going.

    That young lady is growing up quickly in this new atmosphere evolving in the Klosses of Thurles¡¯s household.

    "And what do you know about ¡®smart bombs¡¯, young lady?" I chip in.

    If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    "Well, they¡¯re always being mentioned on the news about Afghanistan and other places where there¡¯s war and conflict,¡± Caoimhe asserts brightly, ¡°so I thought like smart bombs, they are only supposed to work when they¡¯re targeted on some terrorist holed up in a cave somewhere. So Etain¡¯s love potions are intended to hit the target and therefore there should be no fallout. But even smart bombs that do hit their targets often leave consequences."

    "Smart leanbh," Etain says, giving Caoimhe a squeeze, "a good love potion delivered with care is a wonderful thing and, I will admit, that Bebhinn and Kaetlynn always make much better love potions than I."

    "Maybe your heart wasn¡¯t quite in it?" I say without thinking.

    ¡®Damn!¡¯ I think, ¡®where did that come from? And delivered with a hint of unconscious venom.¡¯

    I recover quickly, "Sorry, Etain, no offense meant to you, I don¡¯t know where in my immature head that pretty snide comment came from."

    "I told you before. You can¡¯t mix a love potion for yourself, Richard, even if you do it won¡¯t work on either party." Etain smiles at me quite sweetly in forgiveness, still squeezing my daughter, with both Caoimhe¡¯s arms wrapped comfortably around the slim woman¡¯s middle in return.

    It occurs to me that simply seeing Caoimhe comfortably building a friendship and trust in this beautiful and smart young woman is becoming something of a comfort to me.

    Caoimhe does have friends of her own age at school, obviously, but there seems to be a bond forming here so soon after Etain has come into our lives. And I know that Caoimhe missed Aunt Katie when she disappeared from our lives without any warning only a few months ago and she needs a woman in her life, especially as her own time of entering womanhood looms large in the coming couple of years.

    The afternoon is wearing on and, as the sun dips lower in the sky, it occasionally disappears behind low building clouds and the earlier warmth of the afternoon fades and the air cools quickly.

    ¡°I think we should be considering our evening meal,¡± I say. ¡°Usually at the weekends, particularly Sundays, we have our main meal at lunchtime and follow with a light meal in the evening, but we only had your lovely veggie soup for lunch. So, who besides me¡¯s hungry?¡±

    ¡°Me!¡± Caoimhe blurts out, but then she¡¯s always hungry, I cannot guess where she puts it all and still remains so skinny.

    ¡°I could eat something,¡± Etain admits, still grinning at Caoimhe¡¯s outburst.

    I go inside the house and look in the frig, not quite remembering the results of my distracted Friday store run, which seems so long ago now.

    I do have a leg of lamb in there that I had intended to cook today. It would keep for a few more days, though, along with the particular veggies planned to accompany the roast.

    Not to be boastful, through necessity, I manage to cook the everyday things quite well, including weekend roasts and regular midweek pot roasts. Ten years as a widower with a hungry growing child has ensured that I¡¯ve learned through many trials and errors. I know that Caoimhe prefers the lighter meats like chicken and lamb to red meat like beef, which is my particular preference.

    I find I have some sliced smoked turkey in the frig that I intended using for my own sandwiches at the beginning of the week and have plenty of frozen veggies and packets of noodles, so I decide to do a quick stir fry for tonight.

    It will be a filling meal but I don¡¯t need to rush to do too much prep, so I put on some coffee for me and boil a kettle for tea for the girls, to tide us over until early evening.

    Etain has decided to stay outside while it is still light out, with the sun putting in rare appearances and it is dry despite the thickening clouds. Caoimhe fetches some blankets that we keep in a chest in the sun room next to the kitchen. The girls¡¯ bare legs are warmly wrapped up by the time I return to the back yard with the hot drinks and a packet of cookies for us to munch on.

    ¡°When the sun goes in, it becomes a bit of a gray day but at least it¡¯s staying dry,¡± I remark as I pour the tea and pass around the cookies.

    ¡°Talking of grey,¡± Etain says, ¡°reminds me that we were earlier talking about the apparent age difference between Kaetlynn and I.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, you demonstrated pretty damn clearly that you can easily fog my simple mind, so I guess Kaetlynn can look like a 25-year-old?¡±

    ¡°Aye she can, but her natural look is about 40 to 45, I would say,¡± Etain smiles, ¡°Our mother was a looker all her life, attracting seven husbands during her prime and all my six half-sisters were mostly beautiful girls. So Kaetlynn¡¯s still pretty cute though for an older sister.¡±

    ¡°For someone only 1600 years old?¡± I snip. ¡°So how come there is some 15 to twenty years or so of apparent ageing between the pair of you?¡±

    ¡°Ah, that¡¯s all because, Richard, I have always been naturally curious about everything in the world about me, and ¡ª¡±

    ¡°¡ªWhich means you¡¯re naturally nosy?¡± I can¡¯t help putting my big foot in my even bigger mouth sometimes.

    ¡°Let¡¯s just say I¡¯m inquisitive and self-reliant, not prepared to sit on my hands and wait for something to happen. I am somewhere between Kaetlynn and Bebhinn in that respect. I have always been happy with my own company, while Bebh hates being alone but not the least bit interested in marriage, while Kaetlynn needs a man in her life and loves being surrounded by children. She married many times down the years, was always faithful and loving to her current husband, but she tells me that Peotr was the last ever man in her life, an existence she had become weary of ¡­ and I helped her to move to the Otherworld."

    "The Otherworld?" Caoimhe asks, "is that like the Underworld, where all the dead people go?"

    "No, sweetheart," Etain smiles, "It is a place full of life, of eternal youth, health, abundance and joy. A few chosen dead people go there to live again but it is not a mournful realm, it is alive with happiness. It is a place known by many names but the faerie folk I know call it Tir na n¨®g, a paradise where everyone lives forever. By my impetuosity I entered the Otherworld and stayed long enough to be affected by it but avoided being trapped there. It is the reason that I look so much younger than both my sisters and will never age."

    "So you didn¡¯t stay young because of King Cormac¡¯s curse?" I ask.

    "No, we were confined to live on Slievenamon for the rest of our lives. The King did not expect us to survive long in such a hostile place alone. But, thanks to the charity of simple folk who sympathised with our plight, we endured there for many years. I hadn¡¯t realised after a time that I hadn¡¯t grown as old as my sisters. I was not quite as vain as Kaetlynn, there were no pools of water on the mountain to see ourselves in and certainly I had no mirrors. Now, Kaetlynn did have a mirror brought to her and she used it in conjunction with a comb to brush her reddish blond hair until it shone like burnished gold. My two sisters often groomed each other, they were fast friends as well as half-sisters and they stayed close together even during her many marriages. One day, Kaetlynn spotted a grey hair while brushing Bebhinn¡¯s head, one which stood out against her dark brunette hair and she pulled it out sharply and pointed it out to her. Bebhinn calmly retorted that Kaetlynn had dozens of grey hairs at the back of her head and Kaetlynn was depressed after checking in the mirror and moaned that she would soon be too old to attract another man to her bed, even one prepared to live with her exposed on the mountainside. When I next visited them, which I did rarely even back then, they were curious as to why I still looked so youthful, having not aged a day in twenty years."

    "You¡¯d already been to the Otherworld.¡± I state rather than question, to me it was obvious.

    Etain smiles, "Of course. I soon took my sisters to the mountain portal, in the shape of a cairn near the top of our mountain that you have to both approach at a particular angle and be recognised by the portal as belonging to or permitted to enter the Otherworld. We went to the portal in the dead of night and I easily sneaked them both in. Both my sisters were amazed that the Otherworld was just as our world, with open blue skies and lush woods and abundant wildlife. Bebhinn immediately plucked a ripe lemon from a tree, but I told her not to eat it until we returned to our own world otherwise she would have to stay there forever. She then picked herself an orange and discarded the lemon, saying that it would taste much sweeter when we got back home."

    "You knew of oranges in Ireland then¡± I ask.

    "Of course, my stepfather was a trader from Africa. He was a man of substance that sent ships to every port in the known world and we had more fruit and sugar in our household than anyone had ever seen. Anyway, my two sisters discovered after many visits to the Otherworld that they no longer aged and they could freely enter the Otherworld, without my guiding them, at that and many other portals. However, leaving a portal from the Otherworld was rather a lottery as they could end up anywhere in Ireland and, due to the curse about sleeping on Slievenamon, then they would have to get home to our mountain before they fell asleep otherwise they were cursed to never wake up. That was the major part of the curse upon us."

    "But anyone going to the Otherworld would live forever?" Caoimhe asks, "Why would they worry about being away from Slievenamon?"

    "Well, honey, the laws of Tir na n¨®g apply in the Otherworld and only work in our world when there is no conflict with other laws, the curse of King Cormac overrules those rules but only in our world. Now that Kaetlynn and Bebhinn live in Tir na n¨®g, the curse from this world has no effect on them there. Besides, immortality relies not just on a visit, you have to be invited and stay for at least a day and night in the Otherworld, without eating or drinking, or sleeping. Even if you took a flask of water with you, the contents become imparted with the magic of the Otherworld and then you mustn¡¯t drink it either, if you intend to return to this world. When you return through the same portal, even having spent as long as several days in the Otherworld, only a few hours will have past in this world."

    ¡°So, how did you first get into the Otherworld?¡± I ask.

    Etain smiles warmly at me. "You know I was a king¡¯s messenger and loved to run and I ran everywhere. I was not only blessed with stamina but I was as swift as an eagle on a hunting dive. And I would avoid people, never engaging with folk on the road. I would run in every direction, always returning to the mountain every evening, where I also explored everywhere. I observed the several ancient cairns, and thought that one in particular looked like it could be a doorway a portal into the Otherworld. My mother, being a witch was familiar with Faeries and was just as observant and taught all her girls everything she learned. Then I found one of the cairns on the mountain. being used by a faerie one night. I ran so fast that I entered the Otherworld before the faerie could close the door and I easily avoided capture. I sneaked around the place for a few days before sneaking out again. I was driven away by thirst, for my mother had warned me that if you sleep, eat or drink in the Otherworld you can never leave.¡±

    "Wow, what a wonderful story," Caoimhe says, looking at Etain as if she was a princess.

    Yeah, I know I am in trouble because I had to close my jaw with my hand, I¡¯m sure I am also looking at Etain as if she is an immortal goddess. I have to say something, although I dimly remember having this conversation, but without Caoimhe being present.

    "So, you only needed something to break the curse keeping you on Slievenamon mountain?"

    "Aye, Richard. Kaetlynn was satisfied with no more grey hairs, but frustrated by restriction to the mountain. The King¡¯s guards did not stay forever, so we were able to move down to the woods and live in more comfort awhile. But Kaetlynn was aware that though she wouldn¡¯t shrivel up as an old woman and die, Kaetlynn still missed her relationships with men. Sure, for many years she would meet men on the mount and couple with them, word got around and she would meet many men as lovers but found that that she could never conceive again, so she frequently suffered from bouts of despair."

    "Poor Aunt Katie, she was like a second Mother to me, so sweet. I know she was old-looking, but we cuddled a lot and her skin was so soft and she never had that ¡®old woman¡¯ smell, like my Grammy, my great grandmother." Caoimhe looks at me apologetically, "Sorry, Daddy, but you know she does."

    "My Grandmother, Mary Goldberg," I tell Etain, "died two years ago, she was 88, so I guess she did smell old."

    "What happened to Bebhinn?" Caoimhe asks.

    "Ah, Bebhinn was happy to remain unattached and she spent her time gathering ingredients and mixing potions which she sold in exchange for food and clothing at the morning market in Cashel, but she would have to rush back on her mule cart before it got too dark because she couldn¡¯t sleep away from Slievenamon. But customers also came to her at the mountain. Together we built a small cottage in the woods at the foot of the mountain where they lived and I visited.

    "It was Kaetlynn that discovered that there was a Slievenamon Road in Clonmel with an inn, where she stayed out all night and fell asleep. Even though there was no written sign, everyone knew it was called the Slievenamon Road. There were no signs at the mountain either, but everyone knew it was Slievenamon. She took a chance, because it was a chance she was prepared to take, as she was so depressed being away from people."

    "So what did you think when she failed to return?"

    "At first, we were not worried. We often travelled more than a couple of days¡¯ distance, we just had to stay awake. But after a week, we were terrified that she¡¯d died by falling asleep,and not waking up. When she came back a further week later and told us where she spent her time away, and slept soundly at night in Slievenamon Road, we sisters ran in every direction, well, Bebhinn used her mule cart, and we found several roads leading to the mountain that were called either officially or informally Slievenamon Road or Street or Lane, so we found we could extend our roving range and found places to live. Over the years more and more roads named such were able to be used, including the odd Close, Drive, Place or View. Kaetlynn soon set up a home in one of the Roads and married a tailor widower; they had no children but were perfectly happy until he died twenty years later and Kaetlynn returned to the mountain. We were amazed, as her hair was as white as snow, until she washed out the magic potion in a pail of water and, as fresh hair grew, her natural red-blond locks showed through. We were just happy that, sad as she was to lose her second husband, she was pleased to be able to find a kind of release from our curse."

    "I must get on with dinner now," I say, "you¡¯ve entertained us with your stories, but I¡¯ve got a couple more minutes to spare. What was the story with Piotr Wisniewski? Ella and I moved here not long after he died."

    "Kaetlynn married Piotr Wisniewski who settled in Ireland after serving with the Free Polish Airforce during WWII. His best friend was Sean O¡¯Malley, and both were foreigners who fought in the same unit for the UK against Nazi Germany. When Sean returned home to Dublin after the war, he took Piotr with him because, he told Sean, he had been politically active in Poland before the war and therefore couldn¡¯t live under the new communist regime. Piotr courted and married Katie Byrne in 1950. She lived in Slievenamon Road in Dublin at the time and when Piotr wanted to move out of the town into the countryside, she decided to move back to Thurles in the same named road. She already owned this house. When you¡¯ve lived a long time, immortals can save little bits of silver, gold, and cash money over the years that can really amount to a lot of money, so both buying and keeping the houses that she lived in was no problem. In collecting regular rents from her houses, you can easily accumulate gold, and Kaetlynn was a smart woman who invested wisely. Bebhinn and I were living with Kaetlynn in Dublin when she met Sean and Piotr, when they moved here I went back to the mountain cottage, while Bebh moved into this house. I would visit a couple of times a year, but it was difficult for me to get here from Cashel, the nearest portal I knew. Now, if I¡¯d found the faerie ring in the bottom of your garden, I might have visited more often. Piotr stayed friends with Sean all his life. Piotr passed in 2008, in his late 80s after 57 years of marriage and I came up for the funeral. Bebhinn decided then that she had enough of life here and she wanted to look after her bees in the Otherworld. Those are her bees in the hives, and most of those hives were hers."

    "Are the bees in the Otherworld different to our bees?" Caoimhe asks.

    "Yes, the Otherworld bees never sting and, when they are all safe in their hives at night, before they fall asleep they sing lullabies to each other."

    "Really?"

    "Aye, of course. After supper tonight, we¡¯ll go out and listen to them sing until the bees all fall asleep, but you must be quiet."

    "How will we know they are sleeping?"

    "Well now, when they stop singing, it¡¯ll go very quiet and then you¡¯ll hear the queens snoring. Sure now, they make a terrible racket in the quiet of the night!"

    Caoimhe¡¯s face is a picture. I look at Etain¡¯s deadpan face. She winks and smiles beautifully.

    "And one of these fine nights, not the night before a school day mind," she says softly to my entranced daughter, "we¡¯ll dance a while at the faerie ring and then I¡¯ll take you both into the Otherworld."

 Chapter Nine THE SISTERHOOD OF WITCHES

    Chapter Nine THE SISTERHOOD OF WITCHES

    It is still dark as I feel the bed mattress shift and a draft of cold air momentarily chills me as the warm comforter is lifted to allow a freezing cold body to invade my cosy nest. Through bleary eyes I can see Etain¡¯s grimly-set pale face, thanks to a shaft of moonlight coming through my bedroom window, her long dark hair loose and wild, glistening wet.

    "Where you been?" I try to say but my tongue seems to be stuck fast to the roof of my mouth and emerges as a strangled rasp with popping lips, something like, ¡®whereu-pop-pop-bin?¡¯

    "Dancing," comes the curt reply, before she slips under the comforter and turns herself away from me. A cold butt insinuates itself into my side as I lay on my back and shocks me into wide awake mode. The last prior thought I remember of last night was Etain curled up on my shoulder as we fell asleep. Was that first cosy sharing of my bed with this beautiful creature nothing but a dream?

    If you are thinking that this was the early morning after Etain had finally reached that milestone in her life that is euphemistically referred to as ¡®attaining womanhood¡¯, you¡¯d be wrong, so keep your dirty thoughts to yourself, would you?

    Etain had been a ¡®woman¡¯ in the brown-up adult sense of the word for at least six times longer than my own country of birth had even been in existence. No, last night we were both emotionally drained after our rather momentous weekend of revelation upon revelation, especially after my deeply asleep daughter Caoimhe had been carried up to her own bedroom for the night.

    Etain simply insisted that she didn¡¯t want to go back downstairs and sleep on her own on her last night as my house guest and wouldn¡¯t consider any other option. I was easily persuaded.

    She put on one of my old tees, that hung down to mid-thigh on her, yet looked sensational on her, and we gently kissed and cuddled under the comforter until we both fell asleep exhausted but happy. Her ¡®womanhood¡¯, if we insist on calling it that, remains intact.

    Now, it is much later in the night and I have slept alone for sometime, judging by how cold my house guest has become.

    I look at the pair of luminous dials on my battered old wind-up bedside clock, registering seven minutes after three in the morning. That trusty old clock is the one that I had used throughout my time in college and my father had used in his college time before me. It must be fifty years old and is an old wind-up Swiss folding travelling clock that used to have an alarm which no longer works, but it keeps excellent time and, before we had this cottage rewired, it was a boon whenever the electrics failed overnight and the radio clock on Ella¡¯s side registered nothing or flashing zeros.

    "Dancing?" I ask.

    No reply. The burrowing butt has stopped burrowing further into my rapidly cooling torso and Etain is emitting a cute snuffling on her breath intake and breathing out with a warm gentle buzz.

    She is already asleep in seconds. I on the other hand am wide awake. I nudge her gently.

    "Dancing?" I pause for a moment and jab her more determinedly with my elbow. "Dancing?" I repeat louder.

    "Mmm, dancing, just dancing." Etain mumbles sleepily.

    "Why?"

    "Love dancing. Wanna sleep, lemme sleep." Etain¡¯s breathing buzzes again.

    "Where?"

    "Wha¡¯?"

    "Where. Were. You. Dancing?" I spell out, well, not quite, but you know, demonstrating that I want answers, now, not tomorrow, even though it is tomorrow already.

    "The Faerie Ring." Etain¡¯s voice has taken on a sigh of exasperation.

    "Our ¡­ Faerie Ring?" I ask, "The one you found yesterday at the bottom of our back yard, overgrown and hidden among the fallen trees and impenetrable brambles?"

    "Of course, now where else would we be dancing at all?" She starts to turn slowly, stiffly to face me.

    "We?"

    "We. My sisters and I was dancing and ¡­" she was fully turned by now and looking at me under hooded eyes, her head bowed slightly as if she wasn¡¯t going to tell me the full story, so I silently let her continue. A small smile forms on her lips as she no doubt recalls her love of this fresh indulgence in dance. "¡­ well, Richard, brambles and fallen branches be naught at all when witches are wont to dance in the moonlight, such barriers melt away by magic, by becoming a temporary part of the Otherworld, returning to leave no trace of us after we¡¯re done with the dance."

    "So, both your sisters came to visit through the Faerie Ring and dance with you?"

    "All of my sisters came, and they came only after I summoned them to come."

    "All your sisters?"

    "All six came, because seven witches is a perfect number for dancing in the moonlight, a most magical dance it was, too, our first with all seven sisters together. It was ¡­ it was lovely. I wish you had seen it yourself."

    "You were wearing my worn out old tee in your dance?" I say, "I imagine it must¡¯ve been quite a sight?"

    "Ah. Comfortable old tees, particularly one smelling sweetly of the man in my life, becomes a wondrously diaphanous gown during a witch¡¯s dance, Richard."

    "You ¡­ I ¡­ we ¡­ er ¡­ am I the man in your life, Etain?"

    "Aye, of course you are, the only man in my life. It is the reason I am here, in this place, in this house ¡­ in this bed. I love you, Richard, and one day, I hope, you will ¡­ love me in return," she looks fully at me now, her lovely face aglow in the moonlight, "in time."

    Ah, awkward or what? Reply to her with my feelings? Do I even know what they are? Really? I have loved and lost, can I,even love again? My confusion? My hopes and fears? The Irish have the perfect retort to such questions, ¡®Feck that!¡¯ Certainly for now, in bed together, such a response is impossible. Change the subject? Yes. Safety first works.

    "I thought one of your sisters died when she was just a small child?"

    "Aye, so did I." Etain smiles broadly, ¡°I now know that even witches, especially a young one like I was back in those days, can have her mind fogged by one with more power than I to fool me.¡±

    ¡°By your mother?¡±

    ¡°No, my father, well, my step-father. I never knew who my father was at all, well. I didn¡¯t know, not then.¡±

    ¡®Not then? What now?¡¯ I think, but then nothing surprises me in conversations with Etain any more, I am in a reality dream. Besides, seven witches dancing in the moonlight, that was interesting and I find my imagination running wild.

    ¡°Look, Richard, can we go downstairs to the kitchen and talk about this over a cup of tea? I¡¯m thirsty after my dancing and I need to look in your eyes in the light when we talk about this.¡±

    ¡®Oh oh,¡¯ I think, ¡®this is serious. What is she up to now?¡¯

    ¡°All right, we¡¯ll go down for no more than an hour,¡± I say, getting out of bed. "Monday¡¯s a work day for and a school day for Caoimhe, so I need to be up to get her breakfast, packed lunch and delivered to school."

    If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    I usually sleep naked in the summer, even though the evenings are now starting to draw in, the house is well insulated but it¡¯s still noticeably colder than being snuggled up under the comforter. Yes, we do conform to the bedroom conventions of the European maritime climate and we have a duck-down duvet, but I can¡¯t help but call it a ¡®comforter¡¯ out of habit.

    With a young daughter at home to care for on my own, I do have a pair of pyjama bottoms in the bottom drawer of the night stand, for emergencies, she still has nightmares which wake us both from time to time and when she was a baby I did all the night feeds and diaper changes or stayed up with her half the night with colds, flu, or fevers, the usual child ailments that we have to go through.

    I already had a tee and boxers on this evening, having shared the bed with a nubile female for the first time in ten years. So I pull on the PJs and feel acclimatised by then to the night temperatures to consider that the dressing gown that I use for the winter months isn¡¯t necessary.

    ¡°I¡¯ll put the kettle on, while you get dressed,¡± I say quickly and depart as Etain gets out her side of the bed and stretches her long slim arms, making the tee shirt ride up her shapely thighs.

    ***

    The kettle boils and I make the tea from the leaves from the little caddy that Etain has left on the side, two spoonfuls and one for the pot. I rarely drink tea at home. We do keep a few bags in as some of the moms of Caoimhe¡¯s school friends, who help with the school runs when I have to leave early or come back late from visiting customers, prefer tea and sometimes they stop off for a cuppa and a chat when dropping their girls off for sleepovers and such.

    Even though Irish moms have just as busy lives as moms do back home, they seem to like to make time to talk about things going on in their lives, your lives and pass on the general gossip over a pot of tea.

    Etain pours when the tea has brewed and we sit at our little kitchen table to talk.

    ¡°So you danced with all your sisters?¡± I open.

    ¡°Aye, it was brilliant,¡± she laughs, ¡°joyous it was, we¡¯d never all danced together before. One or two I hadn¡¯t seen since I was a wean and one or two more I had never ever seen before. It was such fun and so much joy and love that Caoimhe finally joined in. She really couldn¡¯t help herself by then, she was hopping about as we danced, I released Dubheasa¡¯s hand and we both held out our hands so she could join the ring.¡±

    "Wait, Caoimhe was there? She should¡¯ve been in bed!"

    "She was. Well, she was earlier. Until I woke her up." Etain looked at me with raised eyebrows. "Caoimhe and I spoke about it earlier and she thought you¡¯d deny her the chance if you knew we planned to dance in the Ring beforehand.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m her father, you shouldn¡¯t hold secrets from me.¡±

    ¡°I know, but,¡± Etain chews her lower lip. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t have wanted her to miss a chance of dancing with a group of loving sister witches in her very own Faerie Ring under the light of the silvery moon, now, wouldja?"

    "No, of course not," I say, "I am sorry I missed seeing the spectacle myself but ¡­ it was just dancing and singing, yes? ¡­ nothing happened that I would be unhappy about a 10-year-old attending and taking part in?"

    ¡®Nay, of course not!" Etain snorts, in a fit of giggles. "Did ya think we were sacrificing chickens or slurping wine or poteen by the pint?"

    "No," I relax with relief, "so, she had a fun time dancing?"

    "Aye, she did have a grand time, she was perfectly safe with me and all my sisters present, there was safety in numbers and she felt perfectly at home."

    "Well, I¡¯m pleased she had fun, but it¡¯s a school day today and if she¡¯s tired¡­."

    ¡°We were hoping you would let her stay away from school today, so she can learn more at home.¡±

    ¡°And what would she learn about, exactly?¡± I ask dubiously.

    ¡°About who she is in relation to the world about her and ¡­ about the Otherworld beneath. I thought we would visit the Otherworld during the day, when the Faerie Ring would appear less gloomy and frightening. You could come too, in fact I think you should.¡±

    ¡°I have work to do today. I¡¯ve a twelve noon appointment to install and commission a new server in Cork.¡±

    ¡°Perfect. I know a couple of convenient portals in Cork we could use even in daylight. How heavy is the ¡­ er, ¡®server?¡¯ you need to install?¡±

    ¡°The server has already been delivered. I just need to be there for three to four hours to connect it up and commission it. Then leave it running for a night and day, monitoring performance from home and go back on Wednesday morning for a final check and sign it off.¡±

    ¡°So you could get by with a bag of tools?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I smile, ¡°something like that. I¡¯ve got a small bag I take with me with multimeter, spare connectors and cables.¡±

    ¡°Great. So, are you coming to the Otherworld with me tomorrow?¡±

    ¡°And I can¡¯t eat, drink, or sleep there?¡±

    ¡°No, you cannot, otherwise you could never return to this world, not without help and even then you would never belong here again.¡±

    ¡°I can hold on for a few hours then. Would I be welcome there, do I have to sneak in and out like you?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t ¡®sneak in¡¯ any more, Richard,¡± she laughs. ¡°I can come and go as I like, but I never sleep and always fast while there. I am not ready to belong to the Otherworld yet.¡±

    ¡°But you are accepted, why?¡±

    ¡°Because, although I am a witch of this world, my father was a Faerie from the Otherworld and through him I have free passage. Although I sneaked in that very first time all those years ago, to the annoyance of the Faerie who I raced past, I recently found out that my father had foreseen my visit and had an eye on me the whole time I visited and, whenever I returned he was ready for me and observed me from afar. I only found this out from my sister Dubheasa two months ago.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve not heard of Dubheasa before. What¡¯s her story?¡±

    Etain smiles, one of remembering pleasurable memories I guess.

    ¡°Dubheasa was my only younger sister. I¡¯m the second youngest of the brood. When she was born, I was still a partly-nursing wean about two years old and for a short while we each shared Mother¡¯s breasts. We shared a cot and later a bed together and we were always very close. She was a sweet child and I loved her so, more so than my other sisters who were still at home. I loved my stepfather too, being only father I ever knew.¡±

    ¡°Who was your stepfather?¡±

    ¡°Elloth. He was a tall, lean man, dark-skinned with glossy black hair which he wore long and braided. He treated Dubheasa and me as if we were both his children. Kaetlynn and Bebhinn were loved, certainly, but it never seemed as much as we youngest weans.¡±

    ¡°What happened to Elloth and Dubheasa?¡±

    ¡°They died of the fever, I was told. My mother Sabhadama took us other sisters away inland to get away from the pestilence, she said. But I only found out a couple of months ago that that was a lie by my mother.¡±

    ¡°What really happened?¡±

    ¡°Elloth was not of this world. He was from the Otherworld, a member of the Tuatha D¨¦ Danann, and he was forced to return by those in the Otherworld that enforce the laws."

    "So these Otherworld dwellers can¡¯t come and go as they please?"

    Etain smiles, "They can please themselves coming and going, it is when they stay and overstay their welcome that they can get into trouble. You see, way back in time the Tuatha D¨¦ Danann ruled the whole of the island of Eire but then they were invaded and fought a series of three monumental battles with the present Irish people, who wanted to settle here, a Celtish tribe from Iberia. There were terrible battles, Richard. There were damaging losses on both sides, with no quarter given. Something had to give or both sides would¡¯ve been finished, and these islands open to fresh invaders who would¡¯ve come in unopposed. So they agreed to divide the island into two domains."

    "So, instead of a north/south or similar separation, one group went underground?"

    "Aye, the Tuath D¨¦ took the Otherworld. Both sides were satisfied, the Celts thought they had received the best of it, the fertile green we know today, but the Tir na n¨®g was the land of the young, of milk and honey, so the Tuath D¨¦ thought they had the best of worlds."

    "Yet you visit the Otherworld and have all your family there but you constantly return to the over world. Why?"

    "Because here is where I was born and legally belong. Though for most of my life so far I haven¡¯t really felt settled anywhere but I did feel an uncomfortable outsider in the Otherworld." She looks at me over the small table and lays both hands on mine. "I feel my destiny lies here, Richard, my future. I have unfulfilled dreams to live here before committing myself to the Otherworld."

    "As you must inevitably?"

    "I know not. A witch is privileged to see the future of others but barred from seeing her own. All I have are my dreams, and neither world has yet promised to deliver me those dreams."

    "If your stepfather, who took your favourite sister away, had taken you to the Otherworld, you would¡¯ve been happy to have gone?"

    "Aye, I would have gone in an instance but then I was a child and I knew only one world so I would have followed him anywhere. He took only Dubheasa with him and my mother wouldn¡¯t allow him to take the other sisters. He told Dubheasa that he wanted to take all of us, because he was all our fathers. He couldn¡¯t say long, so he returned to the Otherworld but was always drawn back to this world by his love for our mother Sabhadama.¡±

    "And you believe that your stepfather somehow ¡®fogged¡¯ your mother¡¯s mind every time he returned to this world and was actually all your sisters¡¯ fathers?"

    "We want to believe that. Dubheasa says that when he last returned to the Otherworld for good that he was in doubt about some of the girls¡¯ parentage and was unable to convince Sabhadama that he was in truth her only husband. He had stayed here too long, that last time, almost ten years, and the fear from the Tuatha D¨¦ was that the Treaty between the two worlds would be broken and that a new terrible war between the two peoples would ultimately destroy both worlds."

    "Your father is therefore banished from this world?"

    "Apparently so," she smiles as she stifles a yawn. "Sorry, I¡¯m tired. Curses are not restricted to this world, Richard and I must endure mine in this world until the end of time, or until I am able to realise my dreams and go to that paradise, hopefully as a fulfilled woman and mother."

    "You are tired, my dancing witch," I say, my own mind racing so much that I am too exhausted to think of consequences, "let¡¯s talk on this more once we are refreshed and rested. Perhaps I can send off some DNA tests for you and your sisters."

    ¡°DNA tests?"

    "Yes, they can tell your relationships, if you all have the same mother and father."

    "Aye, Richard, that sounds a great idea! I¡¯ll explain DNA to them. So, we can consider visiting the Otherworld in the daylight, when the Faerie Ring is not so overwhelming, and then you can meet all my lovely sisters."

    "Now I definitely won¡¯t sleep a wink!"

 Chapter 10: CONSIDERING THE OTHERWORLD

    Chapter 10: CONSIDERING THE OTHERWORLD

    Caoimhe is full of beans and breathless in describing her dancing with the witches under the light of the moon. I haven¡¯t seen her so enthusiastic about anything for years and is acting more like a child again instead of her usual ¡®serious widower¡¯s housekeeper¡¯, a mantle which she had seemed to adopt in recent years.

    ¡°I held hands with Dubheasa, then Alannah spun me around until I was giddy and then I danced with Auntie Katie and even though she was a beautiful young woman now if I closed my eyes she seemed just the same kind and loving old woman that I had know ever since I was born.¡± Pauses for breath. ¡°You should have seen her, Dad, she was amazing!¡±

    She turns to Etain, ¡°Now, please tell me again who is who? I get so mixed up, and they are all so beautiful in all their lovely dresses. Who¡¯s the really blond girl?¡±

    Etain smiles indulgently at my eager little girl. ¡°Caoilfhoinn. She was always very fair and very beautiful, she would sing all the time and accompanied herself on the harp. I was about four years old when I was told by my mother that she had been snatched by pirates, but really, her father had returned from Tir na n¨®g for her and took her away to learn the ways of the Faeries.¡±

    ¡°So tell me all about your sisters, please, please?¡± She pleads.

    ¡°My mother Sabhadama was married seven times to who she thought were seven different men and she had seven daughters but most of them left home while they were about your age or even younger. And we last three were taken from her and banished by the High King.¡±

    ¡°So who was the first of the seven daughters?¡± Caoimhe asks.

    ¡°Afric was the eldest, whose father Cr¨¦dne worked as a carpenter who built grand longhouses and he left his wife and child for several months to built a palace for the High King, but he never returned. Afric moved away herself when she was 12 (when I was only a wee babe in my cot, so I never knew her at all). As you saw last night she is dark-haired and brown eyed and she is simply brimming over and full of fun. I recently found out on first meeting her that Afric also worked as a messenger for the King, we sisters were all keen and efficient runners. She was captured and imprisoned, kept chained up for months for not giving up her message to her captors."

    "And she was only about my age?"

    "Aye, we didn¡¯t really count the days, only the seasons, so birthdays never amounted to anything. I think she was maybe a year or two older than you, but boys and girls worked at very young ages back then. So she was a very young girl anyway to be locked up in a dungeon. She told me she was very afraid, but resolved never to tell her captors her secret message, hoping that, if no word was heard from her, the King would assume the message was intercepted so would have changed his plans accordingly, and with her messages losing value, that she would be released.¡±

    ¡°Was she released? ¡±

    ¡°No, well not by those that held her. But, one moonlit night a band of silent Faeries made the prison walls disappear just like that," Etain loudly clicks her fingers, "and they took Afric to the Otherworld where she has lived happily ever since. As the daughter of a Tuath D¨¦ Danann she was entitled by right of birth to enter the portals and stay within the Otherworld for eternity. She rarely ventures out of Tir na n¨®g nowadays but she answered my invitation to our dance gladly, if only to meet you, Caoimhe.¡±

    ¡°She was so sweet and kind,¡± Caoimbhe recalls, ¡°and so light on her feet, too. Who was the next sister in line?¡±

    ¡°Aah. The blond Caoilfhoinn was next. Mother remarried a merchant when it was clear that Cr¨¦dne had abandoned her and Afric. A woman on her own with a baby would find it difficult, with only the income from potions coming in. Caoilfhoinn was born about three years behind Afric and she was very fair skinned and strawberry-blond headed, she was taken by pirates when she was ten and, to be honest, I barely remember her from my childhood. But when we were first banished to Slievenamon our mother admitted to us that Caoilfhoinn¡¯s father was a Tuath D¨¦ Danann, and that they were not of this world and do not belong here so therefore they cannot stay for long because of the old laws that were signed more than three thousand years ago and those laws cannot lightly be broken. The Tuatha D¨¦ Danann are powerful god-like people who tend to come and go between this World and the Otherworld as they please. They are able to use real magic and much more powerful than whatever we witches can do. When her merchant husband left to return from whence he came, he took his daughter Caoilfhoinn with him. The pirate story was simply a story our mother told to Afric and she in her turn told the younger babies as they came."

    "So who was that new merchant husband?" I ask.

    Etain smiles. "Cr¨¦dne returned himself but he fogged Mother¡¯s mind so that she didn¡¯t recognise that he was her first husband returned, but he did tell her half the truth, that he was from the Otherworld and that he couldn¡¯t stay long."

    ¡®And she fell for him all over again?"

    "Aye, the Tuath D¨¦ live under fewer constraints than us witches. We cannot use our magic to make someone fall in love with us, but the Tuatha D¨¦ can, and they do so effortlessly because, to us they are perfect and god-like¡ª¡±

    "Ha!" I interject, "even though they lie and trick you with disguises and run away when the Otherworld police show up with an arrest warrant?"

    "True, they are beautiful and irresistible and they are also selfishly shallow and care little about the mayhem they cause, but love them we do, and Sabhadama was a witch who fell in love with the same suitor every time but she was also determined that she could never to go to the Otherworld. Her first husband Cr¨¦dne never invited her, but, according to my other sisters in the Otherworld, he had asked her every other time and she never went with him."

    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

    "So where is your mother?"

    "She lies under one of the four cairns on Slievenamon mount. She was brought to us on a donkey cart to spend her last days with us. She was old and frail, her hair as white as whale bone, but Bebhinn¡¯s honey potions and Kaetlynn¡¯s healing hands made her last two days and nights in this world a happy time. She had no regrets, knowing that by then we three sisters had already become immortal in this world due to our birthright and having stayed for sufficient time in the Otherworld for our bodies to change enough without permanently committing ourselves to the Otherworld. And when her time came to an end we laid her to rest on the highest but one spot on the Mount, a place where the setting sun would rest to warm the stones before sinking into the ocean and we three sisters piled up the cairn stone by stone and issued a curse on any man who disturbed her rest."

    "Wow!" I breathe out slowly, my mind imagining the scene, hearing them sing that curse in their ancient tongue as they gathered and carefully placed each stone. I can¡¯t envisage the words of their incantation but I can ¡®hear¡¯ the keening and feel the love and see it manifest even now as a single tear rolls down Etain¡¯s face.

    I gently embrace her across the table and Caoimhe rises from her chair and joins us in a group hug of empathy.

    ¡°Sit, sit,¡± Etain enjoins, ¡°please, so I can get the rest of my family on the table for you so that when you meet them, Richard, you will have some idea of who they are and their history.¡±

    I release her and Caoimhe seats herself at the table. Etain wipes her eyes, sets her shoulders and continues.

    ¡°Alannah was 2 years behind Caoilfhoinn and we were told she had died during her infancy, before I was born, apparently she was fair skinned with dark red hair and green eyed, and so I was able to pick her out when we first reunited a couple of months ago. Again, it appears that my mother Sabhadama was like cat-nip to Faeries and another Tuath D¨¦ Danann courted and wed her, but now we know it was another of Cr¨¦dne¡¯s deceptions. Again he spirited her away while still a wean to his own world when it came time to return.

    ¡°Kaetlynn, your ¡®Aunt Katie¡¯, Caoimhe, was two years behind Alannah. Her father I was told was Dagda, a river fisherman who could catch all the salmon they could eat without even a net, the fish were so charmed that they would jump into his arms. Kaetlynn was always proud of her father and even though he has confessed to having seven aliases, she still calls him Dagda in our conversations. Green eyed and red-blonde haired, not the white hair you both remember, Kaetlynn was always fiery of temper and very passionate, which is why we got into trouble over Fionn Mac Cuill!¡±

    ¡°If she hadn¡¯t got you banished, we would never have known either of you,¡± I can¡¯t help myself saying. I am already thinking that my life has changed forever and cannot imagine it without the life force that is Etain in it. I cannot help a feeling of disloyalty dig as the nerves running up my spine to my brain but I shake it of; I live in the now and have been going through the motions emotionally for a decade.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know about that, Richard,¡± Etain smiles, ¡°Fate is a force beyond human reason and I believe that Fate would have found a way. Anyway, Kaetlynn married young and had three children quite close together but lost her husband and two youngest in tragic circumstances. Because we three sisters were cursed over the Fionn Mac Cuill incident, she could never go back to live with her surviving child again. Her son Aodhan regularly came to the mountain to visit but she sadly had to watch him grow old and die. He lies under another cairn on the Mount close to the grandmother who had cared for him in the absence of his mother.¡±

    ¡°That is so sad,¡± Caoimhe says, ¡°Couldn¡¯t he have gone to the Otherworld and lived forever?¡±

    ¡°Aye, as her son, Aodhan was entitled but by the time he died Kaetlynn and I didn¡¯t know what rights we could have evoked. Besides, he loved his wife Brigit, a sweet girl, so much that he wouldn¡¯t go unless she could too. So, now we reach Bebhinn, who was two years behind Kaetlynn, and once upon a time she lived in your house before you. She is a brunette with big hazel eyes like a deer but a plain face. She has always been a quiet, studious girl and woman. She so loved mixing potions, was oft cheated on and her sweet nature taken advantage of by traders, although we sisters tried to protect her when we could. She is so open, honest and very trusting. She has always remained a virgin. Her father worked as a blacksmith, and we were all told by Mother that his heart simply gave out one day while working at the forge. In truth, he was chased back to the Otherworld and this time he was unable to take any of the children with him.¡±

    ¡°Your father ¡­¡± I¡¯m lost for words that would give vent to what I feel. I¡¯m only a father to one, not seven but this man, god, wizard, whatever he was, was bad news.

    ¡°I know, Richard, but these beings are not us, they are not of our world where witches and man reside and in the main have thrived. But in time, as your knowledge of the Tuatha D¨¦ Danann grows, you will, I assure you, have a greater understanding, perhaps enlightened even more than I have been. However, in the line of sisters, we have come to me, Etain. I was born two years behind Bebhinn, and I am also a virgin.¡±

    ¡°TMI, Etain, much too much TMI,¡± Caoimhe cringes but then smiles as she looks at me with raised eyebrows, reminding me that I should be having ¡®that word¡¯ with her sooner than I had imagined.

    ¡°Now, my father was gone before I was even born. I only knew his name was Ogma, but in truth he was the same father as my sisters. The family had moved to the seaside very near the port of Cork by then although it was not much of a port in those days, though many ships came and went it was such a good harbour; my dear sweet sister Dubheasa was another two years behind me, She was dark skinned and brown eyed, her father Elloth was a trader in spices and was also dark, I always thought he was from Africa because of the colour of his skin and that he traded in fruits, fruits I had never seen before. Again, he fogged everyone¡¯s mind, so even Mother never cottoned on to him being the seventh version of the same Tuatha D¨¦. Elloth stayed with us for about eight years, which was his longest ever stay, although he made many long sailing trips so in truth he probably returned regularly enough to the Otherworld to satisfy the requirements of the Treaty and used the portals to bring back fresh fruit for the market. And we all thought he must¡¯ve been the quickest sailor in the world! Elloth and my sister Dubheasa died of a fever when I was 10, that¡¯s what we were told at the time. And that was the last time my mother married. I was very close to my step-father, Elloth, he was the closest person to a father figure in my life, although Kaetlynn¡¯s last husband Piotr Wisniewski was a darling who Kaetlynn felt she could never replace and that determined her to leave this world once she saw that Caoimhe didn¡¯t need her any more.¡±

    ¡°Oh, Etain, I did need her. I really miss her so much,¡± Caoimhe wails.

    ¡°I know you do need someone, so that is one of the reasons I allowed Kaetlynn to persuade me to come here. The next few years can be tough on a girl with only one parent, I know that from experience, but it must be even harder than I had it without a mother or older sisters who have endured the stages of change from childhood to adulthood. I think Bebhinn also felt that Kaetlynn¡¯s time here was running short and opted to move to the Otherworld first. Kaetlynn met your mother Ella as she was trying to sell both these houses and after meeting her decided to take hers off the market and stay for a while.¡±

    ¡°So you are staying here instead?¡± Caoimhe asks hopefully.

    ¡°Aye, and will stay here for as long as I am needed.¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Etain,¡± Caoimhe reaches across the table with both hands, which Etain takes in both hers.

    Caoimhe squeezes her hands and releases the nearest one to hold onto one of mine. So I reach across and hold Etain¡¯s hand and we all smile at each other. I feel like we are becoming a family, the first that Caoimhe¡¯s known.

 Chapter 11: DREAMS?

    Chapter 11: DREAMS?

    I sigh contentedly on Friday morning and remain in the warmth under my comforter even though I feel the need rising within my bladder to use the bathroom soon. I think I can hang on a little longer though, not wanting to disturb Etain, whose lovely head is resting on my chest, her light snoring reminding me of the slumbering bees who are probably only now waking up for another long day of foraging.

    Yes, Etain is still sleeping in my bed, five nights on. She has done so ever since she begged to stay with me on Sunday night after Caoimhe retired early ready for school next day, the poor girl exhausted after the excitement of the weekend with the unique Etain as our guest.

    I had been exhausted too, and I confess that I put up little resistance, agreeing with her sentiments that, "although I know that I love you Richard, I want to be absolutely certain of our mutual feelings before we ¡­ you know. Can I somehow ¡®soothe thy savage breast¡¯ by singing to you?"

    Well, it has been a long time for me to share a bed with anyone, let alone a maiden and, even though it seems odd, even as the thought crosses my mind again, knowing she tells us that she¡¯s at least about 1600 years old, I just cannot help react to how young she looks and conscious too, that if we did settle into the long term relationship that she seems to desire, when I¡¯m seventy and clearly mortal and running out of time, she¡¯ll still look only twenty and as immortal as only a goddess can be.

    In a matter of just a few days, Etain has insinuated herself into every aspect of our lives, my daughter and I.

    Even though her house has had the electric power restored and she still prefers cooking half our meals over her own open peat fire, she is learning to use our switched on domestic appliances.

    She cooks our breakfast every morning and most of our main meals, and prepares Caoimhe¡¯s school snack box to take with her for lunchtime.

    So Etain sleeps with me at night, testing my resolve to keep my hands off her delectable body every night and every morning. Now she spends most of the day with me too, travelling to my various work sites in my car or, if I am at home making online meetings or updating servers remotely, she will do the housework or continue to explore the extensive grounds on her side of the cottage and forage for food that I didn¡¯t even know existed.

    Then we collect Caoimhe from school together, which almost makes me feel that we are becoming a family. And, of course, Etain has instantly got on with the Moms that we share the school runs with. They don¡¯t have the same school bus system here as in the US, due to the short distances and the schools are much smaller and more neighbourhood based.

    Some of the Moms were included me with moving eyebrows and winks. They think that Etain is perfect but then they don¡¯t know that she¡¯s a powerful witch who can calm me with a touch and immortal so she will outlive me and my child¡¯s children and my grandchildren¡¯s grandchildren.

    It is a lot to think about as we lie there at dawn.

    I think that she goes to the faerie ring too, and even went out Wednesday in the middle of the night, as I noticed her gone when I woke up alone in the middle of the night. I didn¡¯t hear her go or even feel her return but she was back here Thursday morning, much as she is this morning, Friday.

    She snuffles and hums with a low drone sometimes. She never really disturbs me, if anything her presence is a comfort, she is always warm to the touch.

    ***

    Monday I had actually travelled with her through the Faerie Ring to a similar portal in Cork, behind a garage in an overgrown garden from where I called a cab to pick us up. They don¡¯t have Uber or Lyft in Ireland but there are plenty of local cabs listed online.

    What of my brief experience in the Otherworld?

    Well, not much to say other than it mind boggling to take in while you¡¯re there.

    I was only there for about 90 seconds on the way to Cork and only about five minutes on the way back. First of all the bramble area of wood in my back yard was replicated in the Otherworld, only outside of the brambles there was no wood, just grass land and rolling hills as far as I could see, under a gorgeous blue sky, while in my back yard it was overcast and drizzling. We took one step and the brambles disappeared back to the Ordinary World, leaving us in grassland.

    The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    We walked down a well trod grass path, around a thicket and into an unfenced and overgrown back yard.

    As soon as we stepped into that yard, the heavens opened up with heavy rain and the garden was suddenly enclosed by a close boarded fence, with a boarded up house at one end.

    Frighteningly unreal transitions from world into another and back again, with no sign of another soul ¡­ or devil or god for that matter.

    A gate next to the sealed-up and part derelict house enabled us to get out of the garden into a Cork street which was just a short cab ride to the office where I had to spend half the day setting up and testing a new server.

    While there, the beautiful Etain, never far from my side, chatted and charmed all the men and women she met in the offices. She even went out of her way to touch one woman who Etain told me later she sensed had a difficult time in her immediate future and had a quiet word of advice for her to avoid what was to happen. Etain said the woman was almost in tears in gratitude because no-one had understood what torment she was going though or had the solution that Etain suggested.

    Living with a witch is never dull, that¡¯s for sure.

    We went back home after my work, through a different garden this one at the back of a pub, stepping out of that wet beer garden into the warm sunshine of the Otherworld again. This time it was a longer walk to find the edge of my back yard bramble patch, which took us back home in a matter of steps into overcast skies and the fresh ozone of recent rain.

    ***

    While I lie here reminiscing over my last five days with Etain, I feel her move. Looking down at her lovely head resting on my chest, I see her eyes blink open as she smiles at me.

    ¡°Were you away with the faeries and dreaming, Richard?¡± she asks, her voice still husky from sleep.

    ¡°No, I never dream. I was just thinking about our two short journeys through the Otherworld, and how strange that the transition seems so, well neat and tidy. If it wasn¡¯t sunny there and raining here, I wouldn¡¯t even feel the transition.¡±

    ¡°Well, now that I know I have a right to be there in the Otherworld, it sort of takes the edge off,¡± she grins. ¡°When I rushed past that Faerie folk on my very first foray into the unknown, I was shaking with excitement and hid for all the days I was there from everyone, fearing that they would hold me until I was forced to slake my thirst and be trapped there forever.¡±

    ¡°But you were not trapped.¡±

    ¡°No, but I didn¡¯t know. I thought I was a trespasser and I still feel I don¡¯t belong. I still refuse to eat, drink or sleep while there, all the while I still have the calling to return to this place, the world of my birth.¡± She sighs. ¡°Is it time to get up yet?¡±

    ¡°No, we¡¯ve twenty minutes before we need to get Caoimhe up from her sleep and feed her breakfast. Were you out at the faerie ring last night?¡±

    ¡°No, not last night, remember it will be Friday night tonight and I promised that we are going dancing together," she smiles. "So, were you not dreaming of me just now?¡±

    ¡°Thinking of you, yes. I seem to be doing a lot of that ¡­ ever since you appeared into my life soaked to the skin a week ago, I seem to be thinking of nothing else but you.¡±

    ¡°And now you¡¯re making me wish that I had listened to Kaetlynn all those years ago and met you and Caoimhe then. I am sorry. It took me a long time to make up my mind what was best for me. I rarely act on impulse. Now I realise that you are the answer to my dreams and my only worry is that I will not fulfil the promise of your own dreams.¡±

    "I never dream while I sleep, Etain, at least I never remember any dreams when I wake."

    "Not even nightmares?"

    "No, Etain, never had nightmares. Caoimhe used to when she was younger."

    "That is so odd, Richard, that you do not dream, or you think you don¡¯t dream. Almost everyone I¡¯ve known dreams. I¡¯ll ask Kaetlynn whether that means anything. Now, what do you know of Irish myths?"

    "I only know of your Finn MacCool, that he was a giant who made or destroyed the Giant¡¯s Causeway in a fight with some Scottish giant. I think I only heard of him through Ella, possibly after she spoke with your sister Katie. I mean, I now know a bit about Faerie Rings and the like and about witches, but I only ever heard of the Witches of Salem kind, but never heard of any witch stories in Ireland."

    "We Irish witches are quiet by nature and we only do good, not evil. My sisters and I were caught out by a sense of injustice, not malice and were punished for our reaction."

    "Well, I don¡¯t blame you for what you did, they were cheats who deprived you of a deserved victory, although the hero at the centre of the story was a cheat and liar," I say, adding, "What other myths should I know?"

    "There are many, Richard," she smiles and, with questioning eyebrows, asks, "So you¡¯ve not heard anything of the Irish legends of Changelings?"

    "No, I don¡¯t think I even heard of them. What are they?"

    "Ah, well, Changelings are people who are cursed to occupy other people¡¯s lives, never their own, often they bring mischief and devilment to normal children¡¯s lives."

    "What, by taking over bodies and changing from a sweet and child to one who¡¯s been a permanent pain in the butt for the last couple of years?" I say with a degree of feeling but temper my comment with a smile.

    "No, Richard, Caoimhe is not a Changeling, she is merely a girl forced to grow up quicker than she should because her only parent is a man, admittedly an adorable one, and doing the very best for his daughter he can, but Caoimhe needs a mother right now and will do for the next few years. You already sense this and dread telling her about sex and menstruation and strategies for dealing with it."

    "I thought you couldn¡¯t read my future?"

    "I can¡¯t but I know a little about you and know the solution," Etain smiles, "and I¡¯m applying for the job, it¡¯s the only job I¡¯ve applied for since meeting the King of all Ireland somewhere back in the mists of time for my messenger role."

    "Well," I say giving her a squeeze, "the job is yours but I¡¯m not sure what I can offer you in return."

    "Your heart, Richard," Etain breathes in reply before she sweetly kisses my hairy chest with her soft warm lips, "that, is all I want."

 Chapter 12: MOMSâ€™ MORNING

    Chapter 12: MOMS¡¯ MORNING

    All Fridays drag, but some more than most.

    Well, this Friday drug on like the rain of Ireland had gotten into and dampened down the sands of time.

    But even in the worst of Fridays there are always high points in every day and the weekly coffee mornings that my school run group hold every Friday is one of them.

    Most Fridays during the school year, around 35 weeks out of the 52, the group of Moms that share our particular school run always get together for a coffee morning (even though most of them actually drink tea by preference to my favourite bitter brew) and we take turns to have it in our houses each week so your own turn as host only comes up every couple of months or so.

    The group pick Fridays for our little get-togethers as it is the day they collect their messages for the weekend (that means their groceries in local-speak) during late morning before lunch and they tend to do the housework in the afternoon. I try and work my schedule around them, especially when it¡¯s my turn to be host.

    Last Friday I had to give the coffee morning a miss because I had a sales appointment in Cork that I couldn¡¯t put off, but this week it is my time to host the event so it is a ¡°must-do¡±. It is basically a gossip-fest for the Moms and I find the experience both edifying and terrifying.

    What is expected? Well, tea and coffee is obviously expected, with milk, sugar, various sweeteners and, absolutely necessary, is some kind of cookie or cake on offer which is expected to be home-made rather than bought.

    Generally, we RSVP our likelihood of attendance during the week so that the host knows how many are coming and can cater accordingly. There¡¯s about 10 of us in the group all living south of Thurles and usually three or four of us drive each day and pick up between 2 to 4 kids, so it works out that everyone gets roughly about 2 or 3 mornings a week off to do other things, which gives us work flexibility. I usually pick up Caoimhe every afternoon and occasionally the odd child or two in addition to drop off. We use the MeWe app among the group so we know who¡¯s picking up who and it works brilliantly and no-one gets left behind.

    I couldn¡¯t take Caoimhe to school last Friday, or attend the coffee morning at Moira Duggan¡¯s house, because I had to be in Cork early, but this week it is my week to host the Friday coffee morning, so I have to bite the bullet and go through with it.

    You¡¯d think my testosterone would drown in a sea of oestrogen at these coffee mornings but, while all the Moms are my age or younger, and most are quite attractive and have become relaxed in my company, they are all happily married. I would say marriages are more stable here than my experience in the Stated. Anyhoo, I have never bothered them with nasty "pick-up" lines and do try my hardest not to ogle them when the weather is warm and they dress, well, minimally shall we say. I¡¯ve never "hit" on them and in response they treat me like an honorary Mom.

    No, that¡¯s wrong. To them I am apparently a "poor wee Gosoon¡¯¡¯ they seem to have made it their life¡¯s work to "pair me up". They introduce me to sisters, cousins and neighbors who just "drop in fer a chat" and when they do the only seat available for them is sitting next to me. It¡¯s obvious and I hate it but they mean well, which makes the exercise well, nice.

    Normally we get three or four Moms turn up for coffee or tea when I attend, and slightly more turn up when I don¡¯t, probably because I¡¯m the main subject of the gossip. I can tell who attends when I¡¯m absent because they are listed as RSVPs on the cell phone app and it soon becomes obvious.

    This week all ten of them are coming, without a single one crying off, no doubt because all during this week Etain has been joining me on my two morning turns on the school run and the four afternoon pick-ups so far, and now they want to know all about her.

    This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

    Meaning they really want to know about her AND me rather than just about her.

    It would blow their minds the things I could tell about HER! But I cannot of course, on the one hand who would believe me?, and if they did and told anyone else, the knowledge of who Etain really was would destroy her life and ours.

    So, dear readers, if only for my sake, regard this whole thing as fanciful nonsense for our own amusement, would you not?

    Anyhoo, it means holding the event in my sitting room and borrowing Kaetlynn¡¯s kitchen chairs as well as moving my own kitchen chairs into my snug sitting room to ensure we can all sit down with plates on our laps and mugs in our hands and still just about have room to breathe.

    Years ago, when Caoimhe started school and I was roped into the school run group and the coffee mornings started, I had to go out and buy a whole load of mugs from a charity shop and, over the years, I have acquired a number of different designs that I felt were appropriate to individual members of the group, much to their amusement, and now most of the group have done the same at their own mornings. I have a number of mugs at other houses that are stars¡¯n¡¯stripes or Uncle Sam and one Captain America.

    Yes, I admit, I actually find these coffee mornings and the chat and gossip that goes on a fun hour or two. That makes me feel more human than merely what I really am, which is a geek leaning towards lonely nerd.

    I usually make cookies or brownies for my host duties but Etain offers to make a couple of Porter cakes and a Bannock, the first cakes made with beer and the second a sweet soda bread with currants added. I wonder if the beer cake is wise, but Etain assures me that pretty well all the Moms have spoken to her during the week about the upcoming Friday coffee morning at "our" place already and between them discussed and agreed the fare to be served.

    I¡¯m easy with Etain¡¯s choice as hostess, as I only have to fill the kettle and the coffee maker. Etain even makes her special blend of tea available. I do wonder about what¡¯s in the tea, as a non-tea drinker normally, I find that Etain¡¯s tea is both refreshing and calming.

    So, come 10 o¡¯clock on the dot, the Moms arrive en mass and within ten minutes we¡¯re all crowded into my sitting room with tea and cake and once they settle, Etain simply charms them all as she recounts her version of how we met only the week before.

    She tells it a lot funnier than the way I told it to you earlier in Chapter 1 and I hadn¡¯t realised until now how much she had noticed and how serious and expressive my face had been in explaining to her about using the phone to ring the Garda if I tried anything on her, and what my face looked like when I stepped in the puddle up to my mid-calf and when I handed her the towels and tried to avert my eyes from her nipples as she describes the incident to the Moms in excruciating detailed detail.

    She actually tells them everything!

    Crap! I¡¯m as red as a ripe tomato stuffed with chilli sauce.

    They all laugh over how we met, the coincidence of us being next-door-neighbors and Kaetlynn being Etain¡¯s aunt and how well the Moms can see how she and Caoimhe get on and, nudge-nudge, how well me and she appear to be getting along.

    Of course, there¡¯s no mention of our current sleeping arrangements, but do admit that we tend to dine the three of us together for convenience. No mention is made of witches or curses, kings, cheating princesses or hulking mythical heroes, but she tells them she was born in one of the small settlements of Cork close to the sea but that she left there when she was a bare wean and has lived in a small woodland cottage near Ballypatrick on the southern slopes of Slievenamon Mountain until moving here to inherit her aunt¡¯s cottage a week ago.

    Of course, most of the Moms, being born and raised locally, knew Kaetlynn well, and one or two even remembered Bebhinn and her jars of honey and the beeswax products and potions that she sold in the Thurles market, which sets off a round of discussion that the market is a shadow of what it was pre-Covid.

    Etain tells them that she now keeps bees like Bebhinn did and, while it is a little late in the season for much honey this year, she will have plenty to share among friends in a year¡¯s time. Which in itself tells everyone that Etain is a permanent part of our neighborhood and they all give me that look.

    Yes, we all know that look, do we not?

    The special tea blend goes down just as well as the cake and Etain has to promise to make more cake for their next visit and one lady, Brenda Cullinder, who complains of chilblains, is given an ointment that Etain fetched from the cellar next door plus a jar of Bebhinn¡¯s honey for each and every one of them that might be a dozen years old but honey never goes off, she says, "if it has gone crystalline, just stand the jar in a bowl of hot water why doncha until the honey goes clear again and it¡¯ll be right as rain".

    I smile, thinking, ¡®I love that girl¡¯ and realise indeed that I love that girl.

 Chapter 13: WITCHESâ€™ DANCE

    Chapter 13: WITCHES¡¯ DANCE

    "Right, Caoimhe," I say to my daughter, "if you want to stay awake for the dance at the Faerie Ring tonight, you need to get your head down for at least a couple of hours."

    "Aw, Daaad!" she whines, "I¡¯ll be far too excited to sleep."

    "At least try, sweetheart," I say, "you will be much more alert and will enjoy the dancing more if you are refreshed. I¡¯ll set the alarm on my cell phone and make sure I get you up in plenty of time. Honestly, you won¡¯t miss a thing."

    "I¡¯m going to have a wee sleep, too," Etain says, which seems to end the argument.

    Caoimhe does go down to sleep after supper and a cup of hot sweet cocoa, without too much objection. Hot sweet cocoa always makes me sleepy so I hope it helps her relax enough to get a little sleep.

    I do have to wake Caoimhe when we all get up at midnight, although the dancing is not going to start until about a quarter after one,when the moon will be directly overhead in our world. We do get well wrapped up first against the chill damp night and we enjoy the adventurous walk as we make our way by LED torchlight, through the backyard to what is now Etain¡¯s house, to the wood where we found the Faerie Ring.

    Once there, with Etain leading the way, as soon as we step into the bramble patch the brambles melt away and disappear while the overcast skies of our world clear and the three-quarter moon illuminates the ring perfectly.

    As I said before, these connecting portals between our two worlds seem to straddle both worlds and what is overgrown or flooded on one side, is open grassland on the other side and, as we enter or leave the Ring, we move between our world and the Otherworld seamlessly, so that it seems a little part of the Otherworld sits on our bramble patch.

    Then, out of the apparent shadows on the edge of the ring, the other six Witches appear and, without any preamble, Etain waves us to stay where we are on the edge and she joins them in the center of the ring.

    They start to dance hand in hand in a glorious ring of beautiful fluidity, all of them suddenly wearing flowing gowns.

    Etain had worn training shoes and jogging bottoms with a warm woollen coat over her sweatshirt in our walk to the Faerie Ring but now she is totally transformed, wearing a diaphanous wisp of what could only be called clothing by a stretch of the imagination and silver satin dancing shoes on her feet as she and her witch sisters dance in a ring, a flowing affirmation of elegance and beauty.

    Caoimhe clings to my arm on the edge of the Faerie Ring as she watches on fascinated by the dance. I am only a little less moved by the fantastic pageantry of fluid movement before us.

    After maybe five minutes or so of dancing, one of the witches peals off, and approaches us as if she is on wings.

    "Caoimhe," she says to my daughter in a sing-song voice, "go and join the others, they desire to dance with you again, while I take this opportunity to talk to your father."

    "OK, Aunt Katie," she replies, before she eagerly jumps up and, as she runs towards the circle of dancers, Kaetlynn describes a figure of eight in the sky with her index finger while pointing at my daughter, and Caoimhe¡¯s waterproof anorak and sensible wellingtons turn into clothing entirely appropriate to any simple cavorting dance of witches under the bright bewitching moon.

    If I was ever in doubt at the tale of Irish mythology that Etain has woven for us for the past seven days, I can clearly have no shred of doubt about it now.

    "My dear sweet Kaetlynn," I greet my former neighbor, "I¡¯ve never seen you such before as you are now. You are indeed as beautiful as Etain described and more beautiful than I have words to describe."

    "And you, my dear Richard, are as charming and as handsome as ever. Now," she says as she kisses my cheek, squeezes my shoulders, then turns and we both face the prancing dancers, "are you yet resolved in your relationship with my sister Etain?"

    "I do not know yet," I reply carefully and as honestly as I can, knowing there can be no secrets in the adventure that our realigning lives have become recently. "Etain tells me that she loves me, and she tells me that constantly so that I can be allowed no doubt," I laugh, "and I do find her absolutely fascinating. In her I know I would find eternal joy for as long as I live. But I must consider Caoimhe before everything else."

    "Caoimhe loves her already, Richard, and she is at the start of her time when she needs both a mother and a father, each for different reasons, both for her protection and her wellbeing as she develops into a woman. As wonderfully well as you¡¯ve been in being both parents for her for so many years, it is now time for her to have a real mother, one who can take her through the next few steps to womanhood and, when she has a family of her own and a man of her own to please, she will get the advice a growing woman needs. At the time that I left the pair of you, and that was partly what made me leave here to force her hand, Caoimhe¡¯s need was becoming more important than I was able to forego any longer. Etain had prevaricated for far too long until that point and, well ¡­ our father was getting anxious."

    "Ah, I thought that the spectre of the Tuatha D¨¦ Danaan would rear his ugly head sooner rather than later."

    "Hush, Richard, you stand two metres inside the land of the Tir na n¨®g and, while there are no walls about us, every tree, every daisy, everything has ears in this place and the Tuath D¨¦ may not be pleased to hear of your disrespect. Yes, our father is involved as he is in everything and I have myself had little to do with his interference, being only of the Otherworld for a short while. I know that Etain has told you of the Changelings ¡ª¡±

    "Wait," I interject, "Etain has mentioned them but really told me absolutely nothing of them. What are Changelings and what do they have to do with me?"

    "Everything, Richard, everything," Kaetlynn whispers, "but I too, know little of them, only that throughout Irish history child abuse and infanticide has been blamed on Changelings, where mothers and even fathers have believed that their normal children have become possessed by devils and changed beyond recognition. My father has been searching for a Changeling forever.¡±

    She waved a hand towards the dancers.

    ¡°My sister Afric will explain to you what you need to know. She is the eldest of us and has been here in the Otherworld the longest, since she was 12,¡± Kaetlynn says, ¡°Etain barely knows Afric, she was only two summers old when Afric left us and Etain only met her again a couple of nights ago.¡± She pauses. ¡°No matter how many times Etain visited this place through portals such as this, she has never felt that she belongs here. Know this, Richard, whatever happens tonight, I know Etain truly loves you. She feels as though you two were meant for each other and no telling her to relax and breathe will hold her back from that belief. If you decide she is not the one for you, then please let her down gently and while we are here with her to protect her. She has always been alone in this world, and has not committed herself to this world, yet, and doesn¡¯t feel she fits in your world either, and she has been happy for all these years to drift along as she is, feeling she had a destiny to fulfil but knowing not what it is. We hoped you might provide the answer and suggested she visit with you. Now she has met you she wants what she may never be able to have and such discovery of a false dawn might destroy her. She is more delicate than you might imagine.¡±

    ¡°I know, Katie,¡± I say, ¡°I do believe that I love her. I realised that earlier today, not long after she gently embarrassed me in front of my friends and I actually felt pleased and delighted that so soon after meeting me she could regard me so comfortably in the presence of others. If felt as though we were already a couple confident in the sharing of our lives. I haven¡¯t felt like that since, well, since Ella. And I think Caoimhe is already convinced that Etain is family."

    "Having an Irish witch in your family, Richard, is a unique advantage that few even know they would wish to dream to embrace. While she would never be able to read the future of herself, or you or your family, well, who wishes to curse themselves to know everything that is coming? Life is to be lived in the day, to have a future full of hopes and dreams. Only those who know their future almost as well as they know their past, have no wishes or hopes or even dreams.¡±

    ¡°Well, I do not have a clue about my future and still I have no dreams.¡±

    ¡°But,¡± she grasps my arm firmly, ¡°You do have hope and wishes?¡±

    ¡°I do.¡±

    ¡°And is Etain now part of those hopes and wishes?¡±

    ¡°I hope they are,¡± I admit, ¡°In a week since I¡¯ve known her, I feel that she has made us a family, so, yes, I have hopes that she is an intrinsic part of our future.¡±

    She squeezes my arm a little harder before releasing her grip and, with her eyes moving to the side and back again, she directs my gaze to where she has glanced. ¡°Good, Afric is coming.¡±

    Towards us walks, no, glides with effortless flowing movement, a tall, willowy young woman with long flowing dark brown hair, a goddess, who smiles so disarmingly that any male who has not just this second determined where his love firmly lay, would be instantly smitten.

    Kaetlynn melts away from me, back to the dancers who, I see in my peripheral vision, pull her in, hold her hands and restart their joyous dancing, Caoimhe eagerly among them, her long red hair flowing behind as she joins the joyful throng as if she has always danced with immortal witches every Friday night when school is out.

    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    ***

    ¡°I¡¯m Afric, Richard,¡± the willow woman that Kaetlynn has left to take her place in keeping me company says in a husky voice, ¡°Are you enjoying the dance?¡±

    I turn my attention from the dancers and look at the goddess now standing at my side also looking at the joyously moving scene before us. She is very tall, an inch or two taller than me, and I am more often than not the tallest man in the room and never yet met a woman taller than me, especially one who is otherwise so light and feminine in her build.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry for my distraction,¡± I say, ¡°My daughter has always had a love of dancing, but I don¡¯t think I have ever seen her so happy as she is now. And, though Etain is still an enigma in my life she looks totally at home even though I get the impression that she is normally a solitary soul. As for Kaetlynn, I¡¯ve only ever known her as an elderly woman, who tended to shuffle with the aid of a walking stick rather than glide and bob and leap so athletically and it is fascinating to me to see her so, well, so buoyant and full of beans. And beautiful, too. I¡¯d always thought she was a lovely person, but seeing her now as she really is, is ¡­¡±

    ¡°Magical?¡±

    I see Afric is smiling with both her mouth and her glittering eyes, amused no doubt by the wonder she detects in my eyes.

    ¡°Yes," I agree, "truly magical. You must forgive me. I am from a culture where ¡®magic¡¯ means CGI, smoke and mirrors and fakery. Since Etain appeared everything seems to have to be looked at in a new light."

    "I can see it is bewildering to you," Afric smiles. "My father would like a word with you in a few minutes if you will permit."

    "Why?" I ask, "Does he want me to ask for the hand of one of his daughters?"

    She laughs, "Is it yourself asking for her hand now?"

    "Maybe," I smile back, "I don¡¯t want to get on the wrong side of a ¡®god¡¯."

    "My father is not really a god, Richard. Powerful, vengeful, and not of this Earth, but he is no god. I have asked Bebhinn to speak with you shortly before my father summons you. He is unable to enter the circle as he has tried the patience of those who maintain the treaty between our worlds too often. Etain and Kaetlynn have mentioned the Changelings to you and I would like to explain what they are."

    "I am all ears."

    "Down the centuries mothers have complained of their baby, toddler or older child suddenly changing, as if some devil had got into the child."

    "Like demonic possession?" I ask, "I know what it is like going through the ¡®terrible twos¡¯ and recently the ¡®pre-teen tempers¡¯, but is possession really a thing?"

    "No, Richard, it is not," she laughs, "I have three daughters, all grown up now, but there were trying times when they were younger but they were not possessed, just children growing up and testing the boundaries. But there have been persistent stories, and many crimes against children, blamed on Demonic Possession of the child occupied by some kind of demon that changes the child from within so the child is unrecognisable by the mother. Think about it for a minute; I¡¯ve seen your cars and aeroplanes. In my day in your world, driving a dog cart or a chariot is easier, once you know the one it is easy to learn the other, but a heavy haulage cart full of stone for building a church, pulled by six oxen was a different matter, as it would be to fly an aeroplane when you¡¯ve only ridden a car before. Same with the body of a child, would a demon be able to control the child¡¯s movements straight away, especially while the original child was still there. No, Richard, it doesn¡¯t seem possible but, in the Otherworld, it is whispered that there are people who are cursed to move directly from death to a newly formed unborn child ¡­ and that child has no memories of past or future lives, is a little awkward in relationships, rarely dreams and that witches cannot read their past or future because they are not born normally in this world."

    "And you think I might be one of these Changelings?" I ask.

    "Possibly," Afric smiles, "You know, my witch sisters of the Otherworld have kept up our observations of our three sisters in your world ever since the curse that banished them to Slievenamon. We would have loved to have grabbed them and brought them to our world, or at least attempted to lure then here. But my father had tried the patience of the High Council for too long and were permitted only to allow Etain to believe she sneaked past Alannah to first enter the Otherworld."

    "So you sisters lured her in?"

    "Aye, quietly, using Alannah, a sister who was taken to the Otherworld before Etain was even born. Thereafter we watched her whenever she entered and again when she left and were surprised that it was 20 years before she brought Kaetlynn and Bebhinn with her, time passes so differently in both worlds. We could never really see them in your world until recently and have been able to hack into the Web and search CCTV footage. Anyway, time for me to dance again, Bebhinn is come."

    Afric squeezes my arm, kisses me on the cheek and walks back to the dance.

    Towards me walks another absolute vision.

    I know I have said these sisters are all beautiful as a group of young lovelies dancing in this ring for the last ten minutes or so, but the present one approaching me is simply outstandingly stunning.

    Now, I have already committed myself to Etain, a beautiful girl I have known for barely a week, because I know I love her, and accept that these other witches are her sisters or half-sisters, so they are almost family and I may have to meet them together or individually for many years to come, knowing that these immortal beauties will always appear young and beautiful, while I grow old and even more careworn than I already am.

    Above all I must act responsibly and not embarrass myself, my daughter or my new love but already feel I¡¯m lost already, my jaw has gone slack and my eyes are stuck out like organ stops.

    I mean, I love Etain, I no longer have any doubts. I love Kaetlynn, too, having known her as a kind-hearted and a well-preserved but pension-aged white-haired old woman, who I relied on for her freely given time and help with Caoimhe for all my daughter¡¯s life and even a couple of years before that as our neighbor. Now, that she looks as though she¡¯s around my own age, with red blond hair and flashing green eyes, she is indeed very beautiful and currently unattached. I can easily detach myself sufficiently and regard her as a dear friend that I¡¯ve known for almost a third of my life. As for the sensual she-tiger with the looks of a catwalk model that Afric presents, well, she admits that she is married to one of the gods of this place, for probably much of the last millennia and a half ¡ª no mortal can be blamed for being affected by the presence of such an unattainable goddess.

    But this voluptuous, dark-haired smiling woman with long black hair, olive skin and soft brown eyes like shiny mountain stream washed hazelnuts, is simply stunning ¡­ a girl that Etain once described to me as being ¡®plain¡¯. No, she¡¯s gorgeous and I¡¯m already completely discombobulated in her aura.

    The vision holds out a hand, her face clearly amused by my obvious reaction, "How goes ye, Richard, it¡¯s a pleasure to meet you at last. I¡¯m Etain¡¯s slightly older sister Bebhinn."

    Her voice is soft and charmingly sing-song, her smile seems to occupy her whole face, very sweet and endearing. I relax, she is sweet next-door-neighbor lovely, not at all as threatening as I thought, and return her smile.

    "The pleasure is all mine," I reply as I gently squeeze her offered hand, "forgive me if I appear that I am a little stunned at your appearance but I was grossly misled to believe that you were the plainest of your sisters, while now I believe you could easily launch thousands of ships effortlessly without lifting a finger."

    "One of the advantages of being a witch, Richard," Bebhinn smiles sweetly, "is that we learn how to fog minds early on in life." She chuckles, "Being told throughout your earliest memories by your mother and all her friends that you are the most beautiful baby that ever existed, and then be ousted in their affections by the arrival of baby Etain, not her fault, of course, and further replaced as second choice by the next baby Dubheasa, would shake the confidence of any child. Then, having the lessons of my mother having seven husbands of such short and sudden durations and departures, and Kaetlynn¡¯s first marriage ending in such tragedy, I decided that I wanted a simple life based on having no child of my own, but sweet sisterly affection and the loving care of my bees, I decided that being attractive to the male of my species was counter-productive in my life."

    "So you would not object to me and Etain?"

    "No, of course not!" Bebhinn squeezed my arm and kissed my cheek.

    How do all these sisters calm me by the nearest touch?

    "No, Richard, I would delight in being able to call you my brother. Now you must listen carefully, as the time of meeting my father is nigh and there is much you must know. Firstly, the Tuatha D¨¦ are not human at all. They came to this world through the same sort of portals as this, because their own world was destroying itself and, powerful as they are, they could not save it."

    "They are aliens?" I ask.

    "Aye, just as we witches are."

    "You witches aren¡¯t human, either?"

    "To be honest, Richard, I haven¡¯t been able to find out exactly where we came from. The restriction on reading our own future applies equally to our past, but I early on noticed when treating people¡¯s ailments over many years, seeing the children and grandchildren inheriting the same genetic conditions made this a lifelong study. The discovery of DNA was great for me. I took a biological degree at Trinity while we lived in Dublin and set up a lab in my basement so I could extract, quantify, amplify and separate samples and analyse without risking outside observation."

    "And what does DNA tell you?"

    "That we three witches of Slievenamon, are clones, that we are, as far as human research into genetics goes, virgin births, with only tiny traces of influence by our previous genetic make-up on the genes of the three of us."

    "Virgin births!" I explode. "But¡­,"

    "Hush, Richard," she soothes me with a touch of her hand on my arm, reinforced with a brush of her lips on my cheek, "my father has admitted to me years ago that what I found out is true. The Tuatha D¨¦ Danaan are not of our world, they assumed their perfect beauty by analysing the humans they found here, and copying what they found here, probably the Neanderthals, and, through a breeding programme, similar to how horse breeders make their horses faster, they produced the first Homo sapiens and changed their bodies to match."

    "Oh my god!"

    "Yes, I have no memories of my father, he may even have left Mother before I was born, my father isn¡¯t how I remember Etain¡¯s father either, as he didn¡¯t tarry for long. No, I remember our family¡¯s last father and step-father, Elloth, a black man from North Africa, but all seven husbands were actually the very same person, whose settled appearance nowadays is as Afric¡¯s father Cr¨¦dne. He admitted to me that he was obsessed with defying the Treaty and visiting here and he was all our seven sisters¡¯ ¡®fathers¡¯ but he has no human DNA within him to pass on, so he cannot mate with humans, but during their breeding programme over hundreds of thousands of years, they were able to produce a seminal fluid which acts as a catalyst so the hostess of the human egg can self fertilise their egg, rather like an hermaphrodite. Since moving to the Otherworld, I have checked the DNA of all my sisters except Etain, who as you know is never still long enough! The six of us are all clones each with subtle differences absorbed from the DNA Records."

    Behind us the dance ends and Afric claps her hands to get my attention and gesticulates that I alone must follow her.

    "So little time to explain so much, Richard," Bebhinn says breathlessly, "Cr¨¦dne is ready for you now. Do not be afraid, he means you no harm, although the Tuatha D¨¦ Danaan are powerful, they are few in number and they can never replenish their numbers, the Otherworld is otherwise filled with people they have known and loved and invited here. It seems that many Tuath D¨¦ are ensnared by Witches, there are many of us here. There is peace in the Otherworld and there can be no breaking of the Treaty, so you must go to him and he will tell you all you wish to know or all that he will wish to tell you.

    "One last thing, Richard. I met your Ella when she first came to look at my house with a view to buy. Both Kaetlynn and I sensed her future and also detected that she was one of us, a Witch, very weakly part of her, watered down over many many centuries, but I confirmed her status by DNA testing; she was a Witch and so is Caoimhe."

    "I think she would be delighted to hear that."

    "I haven¡¯t told her yet, Richard, but I sampled Caoimhe¡¯s DNA on Wednesday and finished analysing it and comparing it to Ella¡¯s that I had kept on file only this evening."

    I look puzzled, "Is anything wrong with her DNA?"

    "No, it¡¯s as perfect as Etain¡¯s or mine, only¡­."

    "Only ¡­ what?"

    "Richard, Caoimhe is a clone of her mother Ella¡­."

 Chapter 14: THE CHANGELING [Part A]

    Chapter 14: THE CHANGELING [Part A]

    "Wait, Caoimhe is not my daughter?" I say as Afric leads me away to the edge of the faerie ring.

    "You raised her, Richard," Bebhinn calls to my departing back as I hurry to catch the Amazon urging me to leave the circle, "so she knows no other Father but you."

    I am confused and concerned but almost immediately I leave the witches¡¯ circle I am pressed into the presence of the ¡®god¡¯ that was Cr¨¦dne and all other conscious thoughts are overwhelmed by his presence.

    He must be 6ft 4in tall, slim, clinically clean-shaven, long white hair and shiny golden skinned. His face is completely unlined and looks like he¡¯s about my age but his eyes look older than the rest of him and dark, as though his pupils completely cover his irises. He wears a long flowing floor-length robe in white, with a string of beads on a gold chain around his neck.

    He holds out his hand for me to shake and asks in a deep and vibrant voice, "Can we walk and talk, brother Richard."

    It was a statement, not a question and I nod silently in answer, more than a little in awe of him.

    ¡®Brother?¡¯ I wonder, ¡®He calls me brother, when I want to ask to be his son?¡¯ I suppose on first sight he appears to dress much like a hippy of my parents¡¯ generation, so maybe he calls everyone ¡®brother¡¯ or ¡®sister¡¯ as appropriate?

    I shake his hand briefly, our first touch, and I break hold first, feeling that he lets go reluctantly after me releasing my slight pressure. His hand is dry and warm to the touch, not unpleasant but I am nervous and therefore more than a little twitchy.

    He turns to walk further away from the joyous dance which is continuing in the witches¡¯ circle. I do not look back but am sure that all the girls¡¯ eyes are on us as we slowly depart. Soon the rhythmic swishing sound of dancing skirts is muffled and then falls silent, until all I hear are our gentle funereal footfalls upon the soft grassy path.

    I naturally fall in step with him walking at what at any other time would be an aimless strolling pace. But there are things on my mind I want to settle between us and Cr¨¦dne had asked for this meeting on his ground, so I feel I should allow him to make the first sound. He doesn¡¯t appear to be in any hurry.

    Within a couple of steps I notice that the moon in the dark sky has changed position and in size from a three-quarter moon to a full moon and the air around us also differs, it seems warmer, with very little discernible breeze to ruffle Cr¨¦dne¡¯s long white hair.

    Even the air here in the Tir na n¨®g or the Otherworld smells different, less dank and musty as the bramble patch in the dark wood was, but fresher, uplifting even, as if my senses are enlivened by more oxygen or something else my lungs were absorbing that I could not even attempt to identify.

    I don¡¯t remember the air being so different from my previous two brief journeys into the Otherworld but I put that down to the rushing between two points as I was on those occasions, while tonight I am much more apprehensive and intimidated, which heightens my alertness in the presence of this powerful individual, the immortal father of the immortal girl I now want to have for my own for as long as I am able to live as a lowly mortal.

    "I overheard your conversation earlier, Brother Richard," he says eventually, in a voice that doesn¡¯t seem to have any identifiable accent, maybe mid-Atlantic if I had to guess, "Afric is perfectly correct, of course, I am not a god as others before you might have thought; neither my people or I am in no sense the Creator of the universe, only like you we are another product of that creation. All the same, I am not human either. My apparently human appearance is a fabrication of very long standing, starting with a fabricated copy of the humans that inhabited this place many eons ago and that image has undergone continual maintenance and has adjusted its appearance in line with human development so as not to appear too unfamiliar and frighten those who we walk among. We have been here a very long time, my brother and individually we have settled comfortably in the way we look. Now, I believe that you have a question for me?¡±

    ¡°Ah, yes, I do, indeed, Sir,¡± I say. Now we are getting somewhere.

    Clearly Cr¨¦dne doesn¡¯t mess about when dealing with mere mortals, he gets right to the point.

    "I would like to ask you for the hand of your daughter, Sir. She says that she loves me and, though we have not known each other for very long, a few days only, I have realised that I too love her and I sincerely feel that I cannot live without her. I realise that there are problems with a mere mortal like me marrying an immortal, and a very beautiful one at that, and I do accept that I will grow old and die while she forever remains constantly unchanging so I naturally fear that she may even tire of me and what I have become well before my time expires, but that is the price I am prepared, no, more than willing to pay. I believe that your daughter and I would be happy together all the while I live and I promise that I will always be devoted to her, nor will I ever consider holding her back and deny her any part of her full potential.¡±

    Cr¨¦dne stops walking and laughs out loud, bending over with both hands on his knees.

    I stop too and turn to look at him, no doubt a worried friend on my face.

    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    ¡®Oh dear,¡¯ I think, ¡®this doesn¡¯t bode well. He is amused by my daring to even ask for his daughter¡¯s hand, like it was a joke of monumental proportion to him, or that he thinks that I am a joke to even ask the question. We will both be disappointed by his disapproval but I¡¯m sure, well, maybe sure, that we can just continue to live together.¡¯

    ¡°Which of my daughters to be sure do you desire?¡± he asks as his laughter subsides, ¡°I do have seven delightfully beautiful daughters, as you know, most of whom are unattached.¡±

    ¡°Oh. Er, Etain, of course.¡±

    ¡°Of course, I knew which one you had chosen even as you asked but you surprised me with your first choice of question so I thought I¡¯d better check, Brother Richard.¡± He was still laughing lightly but now upright again. ¡°Etain has been waiting for you, without realising who she was actually looking for, for many years. It was a burden that I imposed on her when she first entered this Otherworld. Yes, my Brother, you do have my blessing to marry her and I hope that the union is fruitful, although I hope you accept that there is a strong possibility that you may only have girl babies.¡±

    ¡°Girls? Yes, of course, especially if they look like Etain, then girls will be fine, more than fine. My daughter Caoimhe would probably love to have any number of sisters, she doesn¡¯t like boys much at the moment, though I¡¯m sure that will change in the next couple of years.¡±

    "Indeed Caoimhe will love all her sisters, she is a witch after all."

    "So Bebhinn tells, Sir, it was a bit of a shock if I¡¯m honest," I say, "Er, will that mean we need to have six girls, to make up a set for dancing in the faerie ring?"

    Cr¨¦dne laughs even louder than before, which I didn¡¯t think was possible.

    Fortunately, we are standing alone in the grassland, with no sign in sight or sound of the dancing witches, only the slightly worn path in the grass to show me the way back to where I¡¯d come from.

    But then I think, if Cr¨¦dne abandons me here as part of an immortal¡¯s mighty joke on the poor sap who thinks he can take away from him one of his precious daughters, would I be able to gain access to the portal to return to my world, if all the girls are only just over on the other side?

    He slaps me on the back, once, then a couple of times more, not violently, more like he is enjoying the craic, and he¡¯s still laughing at me. I feel as low as a worm right now.

    "Brother Richard, your life henceforth will never be the same again, and I speak as a father of those same seven sweet and occasionally infuriating girls of mine. But I will never regret the begetting or the rearing ¡­" he pauses, his smile fading, "my only regret is that their mother chose her own path and not the preferred one of my choosing ¡­ otherwise you could have met her here. But Etain will always be true to you, witches are universally renown for their steadfastness as well as the stubbornness that accompanies their every action. However, your first question to me was not the one I was expecting, brother."

    "And that is¡­?" I ask.

    And he replies to my enquiry with his anticipated question, ¡±Why do I call constantly you ¡®Brother¡¯, brother?" His laughter is stifled but he still smiles with thick white eyebrows raised as he awaits my response.

    "I did wonder at that, but immediately dismissed it as just a mode of speech, as I am not aware of your cultural conventions here in the Otherworld. Other than the sister witches, you are the only Otherworlder of my acquaintance. I was brought up by my parents to regard older men respectfully as ¡®Sir¡¯, and all adult women as ¡®Ma¡¯am¡¯, and I sort of expected you to call me ¡®Young Man¡¯ or ¡®Son¡¯, even though I hadn¡¯t yet asked your permission to marry your daughter and, by implication, become your son-in-law."

    "Ah, yes, well, in that case, I welcome you gladly as a new son. But you are still my brother, although you yet have no knowledge of that fact."

    ¡®How can you call me ¡®brother¡¯, I was not even born in Ireland, I know my father and mother, they are both American and are still at their home in Florida, I speak to them every couple of weeks, and I¡¯m sure I¡¯ve never seen you among my uncles or my parents¡¯ friends.¡±

    ¡°Well, despite the apparent conviction you have of the circumstances of your birth, I still call you brother, Richard, because I recognise that you are indeed a Changeling, in fact the Changeling of legend and history. As such you could have been born anywhere on this world, especially as the world has gotten smaller and the mortals among who you live travelled further in more recent centuries. Your body was chosen as host partly by random and partly by relative proximity. Your previous body probably died close to where you were born or were living as a normal very young child. According to the legends that I have collected, most often the phenomenon of Changeling occurred between birth and two years old."

    "My father¡¯s family are German but my grandmother on my mother¡¯s side was from Irish stock who moved to California about a hundred years ago. I was born in Santa Monica in 1981."

    "I see. Now that I am close to you I find that I strongly sense my brother¡¯s presence but we cannot communicate, which I was expecting. When Kaetlynn first told me of your existence and her concerns for you when she joined us here a few months ago, I discounted the possibility of who you were completely at first. I did recognise that your daughter was a witch and therefore the daughter of a witch after I saw her dance from the edge of the circle a few days ago. Then, when I heard that you do not dream and insisted that you never had, I was intrigued and determined that I wanted to meet you in person at the earliest opportunity.¡±

    ¡°So you and your brothers and sisters do not dream?¡±

    ¡°No, brother Richard, we, the Tuatha D¨¦ Danaan, never sleep, we have no need to sleep, so how or why would we dream? Now do I have sisters, we immortals have no need to procreate a new generation so in our true form we have no gender. But that is a discussion we must have later. Now that I see you close to, and we have touched hands, I strongly sense my brother is here with us, within you, he actually is you. Your body is human and therefore it is necessary for your well-being and continual existence that your body has to sleep but the inner you, my brother, is always awake even if disconnected from the network of his brotherhood. I have searched for you for nigh on 2000 years but even though I have lived for eternity, it feels I have missed you, my brother, forever."

    "So your brother is inside me? Who is he? How can you get him out?"

    "Ah, there¡¯s the crux of our dilemma," he smiles in a way that is disconcertingly unhumorous.

    "So, does that mean there is no simple solution to extract your brother and leave me ¡­ er whole?"

    He laughs again, only briefly and again without any humor, "Yes, Brother Richard, unfortunately, your body is mortal and would not survive any bodily extraction although we could duplicate your body exactly from the remnants with the addition of water and replace those volatile gases that would have escaped during the destruction of your body."

    "Ah! That sounds ¡­ painful," I suggest.

    "You would definitely feel everything up to the point where you didn¡¯t of course," he shrugs. "At least here in the Tir na n¨®g you are free of the witch¡¯s curse that you have endured for so long."

    "Oh, God Damn!" I swear, "I am surrounded by curses! They¡¯ll literally be the death of me."

 Chapter 14: THE CHANGELING [Part B]

    Chapter 14: THE CHANGELING [Part B]

    "You do seem to have an unfortunate propensity to attract them, Brother Richard. This curse, once it runs its course, will mean the end of this human body but, in this otherworld, your true self will no longer be a Changeling suddenly bereft, urged by the witch¡¯s curse to randomly seek a body to inhabit at every failure of your human shell."

    "Is your brother a sort of symbiotic infestation or is he something more sinister?" I ask.

    "No, my Brother, you are in complete occupation of your human form, it happened for this body as a baby or young child and your memory-wiped consciousness was a blank canvas from which your present personality has evolved, completely shaped by your upbringing. There is nothing of your body¡¯s original consciousness left ¡­ I¡¯m afraid your parents¡¯ child has gone. This is why you are called "the Changeling", over the years, perhaps sixty, seventy or even a hundred times, you have died in one body and been resurrected in another, with no surface knowledge of your real self. It is a perpetual process of the witch¡¯s curse that has kept you from your own people for so many years."

    "How? Why?"

    "To understand, I need to explain where the Tuatha D¨¦ Danann originate from, how we took this form and what I believe my brother did when he was still himself to put the present you into this predicament."

    ¡°So where are you both from, originally?¡± I ask as we continue to walk along the path in the moonlight.

    We are not standing on a pavement, just a pathway worn in the grass underfoot. We are not in the wood on Etain¡¯s land, but in flat grasslands as far as the eye can see, with a few trees dotted about, no fences or the well-defined and intensely purposed fields of Tipperary.

    "Firstly, let us retire to somewhere rather more comfortable for you to be."

    He clicks his fingers and the moonlight countryside disappears and we are instantly standing in a large but comfortable sitting room, fitted with comfortable armchairs and sofas grouped in a semi circle around a roaring peat fire, illuminated by the soft light of a number of low-wattage lamps on tables. The walls are a subtly patterned cream wallpaper, with paintings of timeless landscapes and seascapes, the upholstery a red accented paisley print, an old fashioned look but a relaxing place to sit.

    "Where is this?" I ask, wondering where he has taken me and would I ever find my way home from here? "How did I get here?"

    "This is your new home here in Tir na n¨®g Brother Richard, where your human body will be comfortable for short stays. I can create portals when and wherever I wish, although this one was created earlier in readiness for tonight. You can come and go from here between your world and this as often as you wish."

    "But where exactly is this place?"

    "Ah, well, if you go through that cupboard door on the right of the fireplace, it is a permanent portal which will take you to the cellar underneath Etain¡¯s side of your pair of cottages in the Slievenamon Road in Thurles. From your side it will appear as a brick wall, but to you, your wife-to-be, your daughter and your sister-in-law, the portal will recognise you and open up for you. Slievenamon Road is the place in your world where Etain is tied to and, as you two are tied together in life, so it is logical that you are tied to this place too. It will be much more convenient than the briar patch portal and, when your human body is close to death you, or your wife Etain, can bring you through your cellar to die here, where the witch¡¯s curse cannot harm you. Just remember, that in this house on this side of the portal you are in Tir na n¨®g, so you cannot eat or drink or fall sleep here, otherwise your human form will be stuck here until death." Cr¨¦dne smiles, ¡®That is why I cannot offer you refreshments. And the other reason why we are meeting here is because I am similarly not permitted to visit your world. I have visited so often in the past that my other brothers have lost their patience with me."

    ¡°I am still a little confused. Is this place, this Otherworld, where you and your brothers were from originally?"

    ¡°No. Where we were born, or more accurately, brought into consciousness, no longer exists,¡± he replies. ¡°My brothers and I were brought into being in the midst of a gigantic sun, shortly after the beginning of the universe. We remained there for most of my existence until the star grew and grew and then quite suddenly our home, that brilliant star, collapsed within itself and dramatically flew apart again in a supernova and we brother were scattered in every direction. No matter is ever destroyed, individually we were collected up, attracted to other stars, all of them so far apart, so we can never be physically together again yet I am still connected to my family consciously.¡±

    ¡°So you were ¡­ what exactly?"

    "I suppose we are pure energy, Brother Richard. If I reveal myself to you it would be like a supernova happening right next to you."

    "Cool."

    "No," he laughs, ¡®definitely not cool. Do you know what happens to stars in a supernova?¡±

    ¡°No, not really, but I suppose you¡¯re going to tell this mere mortal what happens?¡±

    "It would be like a million nuclear explosions in one spot, consuming you to ash and revealing my brother¡¯s true form that I know will destroy both your forms, as well as this planet and probably most of your tiny solar system with it."

    ¡°Oh, my God!¡± I cry, ¡°Could that happen by accident?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± he laughs, ¡°the mortal part of you is funny, my brother, more so because you haven¡¯t yet accepted exactly who you are. I can be in more than one place but mostly I am here in this human form while my true self is within a huge star in a different galaxy from here where you are in the Milky Way. You, my brother, are also residing as a ball of burning energy in another star in yet another distant galaxy, each flying far away from here at a speed your human self couldn¡¯t appreciate."

    "So, if you and my other self are a ball of burning fire, how did you get here and appear as yourself?" I ask.

    "Good question. One of our brothers who was travelling much faster than us discovered by accident how to slow down time and, while exploring time and space he worked out how to project his consciousness to other timelines and dimensions. As when are all connected, we all knew how to do it too, which allowed other brothers to expand our knowledge, even to project ourselves to other planets and worlds. Sometimes brothers were beset with disasters but we all learned from those experiences and were able to analyse living creatures, build replicas from materials available on that world or other worlds and inhabit that world as if we were born to it."

    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    "Like Earth?"

    "Yes, one of many worlds that we tried until we came to Earth, where we found we enjoyed life here. Other brothers found vastly different worlds that were more to their liking. Earth wasn¡¯t interesting enough for many of our brothers. We share information instantly," he chuckles, "it takes a lot of effort to sift through a lot of stuff that is of no interest but it took a lot of time to get used to the mountain of information compared to when for so long we all shared exactly the same physical and mental experiences."

    "I don¡¯t think I can take all this in. A week ago I didn¡¯t even know witches existed. Now I¡¯m supposed to be a ball of energy with amnesia? I¡¯m too stupid to make sense of any of this."

    ¡°Brother Richard, don¡¯t be down on yourself. You are still what you are and soon, well, soon in astronomical terms, you will get your memories back-¡±

    ¡°But what about my memories, my memories as Richard Kloss, human of this world?¡±

    ¡°Brother Richard, you are safe here in the Otherworld and the curse no longer applies to you here. It means that when your human body dies you will not be forced into becoming a Changeling within a new body, with no memories and having to live a mortal life all over again. Presently, you are still suffering from the application of that curse, coming from a very powerful witch, your once lover, Trixopheron.¡±

    ¡°So I am going to die then?¡±

    ¡°Not exactly, Brother Richard you are truly an immortal, one of the Tuatha D¨¦ Danaan, you are my brother. You cannot die of old age. In your true self you can be what you would call being ¡®killed¡¯, your human self could die in battle of wounds too severe for your conscious link to recover, trapping your true self in that distant star, having no reference point in which to create a portal, space is just too large to grasp such a tiny location. But, otherwise you cannot catch a cold or any disease and never suffer from old age. You do not need to eat, nor do you need to breathe. The human body you inhabit is not sustained by you, like my human body is, because you are locked into the mortal world by the witch Trixopheron¡¯s curse that prevents you from remembering how to maintain it, so your body will decay in time, I will not tell you when-¡±

    ¡°You can tell when I¡¯m going to die?¡± I ask.

    ¡°I can, but I won¡¯t, Brother Richard. We have been interacting with humans for a hundred thousand years, we have nurtured them and guided them where we have felt they would lead better lives, without imposing our will upon them, well, not too much. We know from bitter experience that mortals knowing their future puts a terrible burden upon them, it is why those Witches that are able to see some version of a person¡¯s future are precluded from knowing their own memories or of members of their family. We Tuatha D¨¦ Danann have no such problem knowing the future, it is not prescribed, things do change but we live on forever. I will not tell you your future in your human form, Brother Richard, but will inform you that you will have a long and fulfilling life ahead of you, just don¡¯t take unnecessary risks. Free will can be a bitch and plays almighty havoc with predictions, even those who are thought to be gods.¡±

    "So, when I die, your brother that is within me, will emerge in his own right?"

    "No, Brother Richard, you are my brother, but you have been bewitched to forget your past and future and therefore you think you live only in the present and in your present frail,body. The only reason why pure energy that lives within a star can exist on any planet is by projecting our consciousness through a portal and using any matter we can find or feed through the portal to build the body you see before you. I look human, I am made of the very same materials as you, but I am not actually alive. I can sustain this body through my portal, suitably insulated from the effects of being only a portal step away from the inferno that is the heart of a star. I do not appear to age because I am constantly and effortlessly replenishing every cell in my body. I am tethered to my real self and I only have this one other existence. Many of my brothers have lost their links not only to their bodies but to each other too. I have lost too many brothers to risk losing another. You cannot save this body from decay because although you are still intrinsically connected, your inability to remember yourself renders you with the same restrictions as a human mortal. When your human self wears out and dies, you must ensure that you are here, safe in the Otherworld, where the curse has no effect and your consciousness will be fully restored as my brother again."

    "And my body?"

    "It will still be warm in your death bed. It will be dead matter but it can be repaired, made good as new. We have found that we do become ¡®attached¡¯ to our bodies, we associate ourselves with our human form. You do not look too ugly, I¡¯ve known a lot worse Tuatha D¨¦ forms down the years; if Etain likes the way you look, well, then I would stick to it and, when you die and my brother¡¯s memories and abilities restored, you can simply remodel out all the acquired bumps and scrapes of time."

    I laugh. "That is funny. So what do you do with yourself? I mean not to pry but am curious as to what I might do if I come out of this as an immortal without my human memories intact. I would hate to be a stranger to Etain and Caoimhe and not know who they are."

    ¡°I believe that if you ¡®die¡¯ safely here in the Otherworld without the witch¡¯s power over you, that not only will my brother¡¯s original memories be restored but you should ¡®remember¡¯ all of your experiences through the last possibly sixty to a hundred lives through which you have lived.¡±

    ¡°That would be both amazing and somewhat intimidating.¡±

    ¡°Like all memories, the most recent would be the most vivid and you can be selective in what you tune into and how you respond to the many brothers who have missed you for so long.¡±

    "So what happened to me, Sir, to put me in the position of being a Changeling?¡±

    "We share all our thoughts, Brother Richard, we all feel everything our brothers feel. You can, how can I put it? ¡­ tune out, I think would make sense, when there were uncountable millions of us after that supernova, each of us getting further away from each other it was almost unbearable after all our lives sharing exactly the same experiences, then every brother suddenly exposed to the cold of deep space alone. We had to develop new senses," Cr¨¦dne smiles, "that was fun, because our only sense for millions of your years, other than our thoughts was the sense of touch."

    "Touch?"

    "We had existed together cheek by jowl in the furnace of the star, so we felt heat and its changes, both as it cooled and as it grew hotter; we could feel pressure touching us which varied depending on where you were, deep inside the sun or near the surface and you could feel all your brothers¡¯ feelings too. After the supernova, we were hurtling away from the centre of our existence and our comfortable predictions of our future, all our futures changed and for the first time, diverged.

    ¡°I felt, in fact I knew by simple prediction that I would be sucked in by another sun, surrounded by other balls of energy that were totally alien to me, who I could never ever communicate with. I am still here, in my present star, surrounded and crowded by similar entities, but utterly alone. So we brothers kept in contact through our subconsciouses, sharing what we were learning from our new experiences. Many brothers were destroyed, or were so traumatised by what happened that they lost contact. Only a few millions were left. Over the next billion of your years-¡±

    "My years?"

    "Yes, of course, your years. Years are a way of counting the number of times your world goes around your star. Your sun or multiple suns at the centre of your star system is the centre of your part of the universe and therefore you can count time in ¡®years¡¯. And why would immortals in perpetual connection have need to consider or count time?"

    "I see. I have much to learn.¡±

    ¡°Worry not, Brother Richard, all will be revealed to you when you are ready. I am here to answer your questions. We have a link of sorts, just think of me in your world and I will get a message back to you, or enter he Otherworld at any point or portal and I will be aware of you and meet you at the portal.¡±

    So you really cannot enter my world any more?¡±

    ¡°No, there is a treaty. It was made with the new invaders of this island many years ago and there is no-one on your side to enforce it, but on my side we are always true to our word. It was you, my Brother, who brought us to this world, it was you that wanted us to stay, to make a difference, it was you who signed the treaty, but it was you who broke it and I was sucked in trying to look for you.¡±

    ¡°Why did I break the treaty?¡±

    ¡°Curiosity, at first, then you fell in love. When I sensed your loss, I broke the treaty to look for you and ¡­ I fell in love.¡±

    ¡°God! What a mess!¡± I say in exasperation, slumping wearily in my chair.¡±

    ¡°Indeed. I will leave you now, Brother Richard, Etain will come for you soon. We will speak again, no doubt.¡±