Faery Tale

by Signe Pike

  Just over a quaint stone bridge across the Aille River in the heart of Doolin, we came to the scenic little yard where we’d be camping, on the grounds of a charming old hostel. That was the plan, at least, until we discovered, to KP’s horror, that she’d forgotten to pack the tent poles. Tough to pitch a tent without the poles. I stood there watching as she turned her things inside out into the trunk of the car.

  Finally, plopping disillusioned down on the grass, I decided it couldn’t hurt to beseech my faery friends. Oh please . . . isn’t there anything you can do? I know you can’t, you know, make tent poles reappear . . . but this is really bad. I can’t pay for the hostel . . . I’m running out of dough here, guys, and I don’t know what I’m going to do . . .

  I sat there stressed-out for about twenty minutes and was headed to see the hostel owner about a room for us when KP reappeared, an embarrassed smile on her face.

  “Uh, I found the poles.”

  “What? But how?” I’d watched her dig inside her bag. They weren’t there.

  “I don’t know!” she said, astonished. “I just . . . I thought I should look one more time in my duffel bag, and so I did, and they were right there, in the bottom of my bag.”

  “Ha!” I said, reaching up to give her a high five—though I wasn’t convinced that my sister had much to do with recovering them after all.

  The hike that took us from the hostel along the Cliffs of Moher was several miles long, rising from ocean level all the way up to more than seven hundred feet. As we walked, we saw the cliffs rising ahead of us, and we rose with them. The sun beamed overhead in a vivid afternoon sky, and I noticed my skin was brown from all the hiking I’d done on the Isle of Man. With our detailed map, we navigated the trail with little difficulty. We stepped lightly, two sisters with big feet on a narrow path, the ocean stretching out below us. Gulls glowed white and tipped their wings in the distance, their shrill cries echoing against the rock. A place like this could make a girl religious, I thought.

  The Cliffs of the Ruin were twice the height of the cliffs at Dún Aengus. I was learning that place names held secrets. And this place name must have been quite old. But there were no ruins on the Cliffs of Moher, just a tower that was built in the 1830s, and another that was built during the Napoleonic Wars. What had been here? Was it a fort like Dún Aengus? And why was there was no information, no speculation, on the prominence this place must have had on an island so alive with history?

  There were three music pubs in the tiny seaside town of Doolin: McDermott’s, O’Connor’s, and McGann’s, and that night we went to all three to get our fill of Irish trad sessions. Fiddle, guitar, tin whistle, the music throbbed, filling the room, seeping into the floorboards of each pub, reverberating in our glasses. Walking back along the road to the Aille River Hostel and our tent, the moonlight shimmered in the fields, and it was easy to understand how many a person, back in the time of Yeats, could have imagined they saw something, on a night like tonight. Before settling into our tent, I looked out to the river.

  “Goodnight, faeries,” I whispered. “Thank you.”

  I’d read that there was no place in Ireland quite as eerie as the Burren. If ring forts were truly connected to the faery world, as the Irish believed, I supposed one would be hard-pressed to find a place more populated with faeries: the Burren had no less than four hundred ring forts in ninety-six square miles. I’d asked around at the pubs about the Burren and its reputation for faeries, and one local man told me that the name Burren comes from the Gaelic meaning “great rock”—he said it was “quite lonesome.” When I asked him what that had to do with faeries, he explained that the Burren was composed entirely of limestone, and that it was bedrock. Some delicate wildflowers, some grass, but mostly just miles of desolate gray rock. Limestone is soft, so when it rains the water erodes it, creating fissures in its surface. These cracks in the rock, which sometimes become water-filled caves, are thought to be portals to the faery world. Needless to say, a hike in the Burren was a must.

  We consulted with the manager of the hostel, who mapped out a Burren hike that would take us up a hill called Black Head, and if we climbed higher still, we’d come to an ancient ring fort. A girl at the hostel was kind enough to lend us her pedometer so we could keep track of how far we were hiking. The Burren wasn’t a death zone, by any means, but it was known to be tough to navigate since much of it looked the same.

  “Just keep your back to the Black Head Lighthouse,” our host advised, “and you won’t have any trouble finding the fort.”

  Apparently this was easier said than done. Black Head rose in steep plateaus, and after we’d gotten a good amount of height underneath us, the lighthouse disappeared from view. The Burren was as desolate as its reputation forewarned. Areas of high, dense grass hid treacherous pot-holes that could easily cause an ankle sprain. When we weren’t walking on the uneven ground, we were treading on fissured gray rock. And yet halfway up, we came to a flat green plateau.

  “Look at this, Kirst,” I said with alarm. “This was a road.” There was a clear avenue along it, made by hundreds of years of tromping feet that cut its way wide and bold across the hill. “We’re getting close, I know it.”

  We climbed several more minutes and then suddenly it was before us, thrust up from the bedrock it was built upon. The tightly lain rocks raised like ancient brickwork to form a perfect circle, though time had collapsed one side of it. The walls were still about twelve feet high. It looked to be about one hundred fifty feet in circumference.

  “Want to go in?” KP asked me.

  “Actually, not just yet.” I wanted to walk around it, get a feel for the place. I told her quickly about Jo in Chagford, about asking permission to enter places.

  “It can’t be a bad idea,” I continued, “especially when you’re all the way up here in a place like this.” I left her to make her own decision.

  The day was clear and the view, incredible. I stood between the fort and the ocean, marveling at who could have possibly built this place. Gazing out to sea, miles in the distance, I saw two distinct lumps of land, long and flat, one next to the other. Those had to be the Aran Islands—Inishmore and Inishman. The sweeping beauty took me, and I don’t know how to explain it, but in that moment, I felt someone. I was alone, and then I wasn’t—but at the same time, he was there but he wasn’t, next to me, admiring the view with a certain amount of pride. I was looking ahead, but I could see him perfectly in my mind—a man about a head shorter than me, with long, dark red hair and a sizable dark red beard. He looked to be in his fifties, and he was wearing clothing of a long-ago time. His face was tan and weathered, and his eyes, I knew, were brown.

  All this was my kingdom.

  I knew no one was there. But all the same, I let the words sink in and looked out, as far as I could see, all the way to Inishmore. In that moment, I was quite sure: on a dark night, you could see a fire lit at Dún Aengus from here.

  I wanted to know the name of this fort. I wanted to know who built it. I knew these things, at least right now, were impossible. So instead I went to enter the fort through the fallen piece of wall. It made the perfect doorway. I paused before I went in, asking permission, and caught my breath. No way. There at my feet was a black feather. I bent and picked it up, supposing this was my cue to go inside. Within the walls, the air felt different, stiller somehow. I guess that’s no surprise since rock blocks wind. But it seemed to create an atmosphere, and I felt safe, surrounded by all that stone. I didn’t see KP and wondered if she’d tucked herself somewhere outside the fort and was already digging into lunch. I walked toward the center of the fort, where there was a small stone circle, built up about two feet high so that it resembled a well, and sat gingerly at the edge. Not wanting to disturb anything, I placed the black feather on a protruding rock halfway down the small stone ring.

  All this was my kingdom.

  The Aran Islands seemed so distant. Could this all have been part of one man’s kingdom? I was wishin
g I had something else to leave, aside from the feather, when something told me to look in my pack. That was silly—I’d just cleaned it out that morning. Something told me to look in the smallest pocket. Feeling stupid, I did it, even though it would be fruitless. Then my fingers pulled out the shells from the beach of Inishmore, two white swirls with an exotic red-and-white striping. I’d forgotten all about them. Obligingly, I placed them by the feather on the stone. It looked better now—less lonely. I went to zip up my pack and clumsily knocked my little head lamp out. It tumbled to the ground and I bent quickly to pick it up, then stopped, my fingers frozen in midair. Underneath my head lamp, lying in the grass, was a small scattering of seashells. They were identical to the ones I’d just left.

  I found Kirsten sitting outside the fort, her back to it, eating her sandwich, and sat down to unwrap mine. I told her about the feathers.

  “I know this sounds weird, believe me. But I don’t know . . . I feel like it’s no big deal, just to, you know, follow my urge. This whole search has become so . . . intuitive. I feel like now all I can do is try to listen.”

  “I think that makes sense,” she said. “I mean, here you are, trying to contact what could be an invisible world. How do you communicate with it? How will it communicate with you? I don’t think there’s any other way to find out.”

  “You’re sounding very woo-woo.” I nudged her playfully.

  “Your mom’s woo-woo. Seriously though. I’m just trying to be . . . open.”

  “I appreciate that. Hey,” I said, switching the subject. “How far did we climb just now?”

  She reached into her pocket.

  “Shit!”

  “What?”

  “The pedometer.”

  “Don’t tell me you lost it.”

  “Damn. I put it on top of the car. On the roof of the car.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Either here, just as we were getting out at the lighthouse, or back at the hostel.”

  “Fabulous. Now we have to buy that girl a new pedometer.”

  “Where the hell are we going to find a pedometer around here?”

  “That’s an excellent question, KP.”

  “Damn!”

  We sat there a moment, bemoaning her incidental absentmindedness yet again. It really wasn’t like her to be this forgetful, and I honestly didn’t know what had gotten into her. She was always the responsible one. Oh, how the tables had turned. Little sister was all grown up! I almost delighted in it.

  “You know,” I said, “there is one thing you could try.”

  She raised her eyebrows expectantly.

  “Well,” I continued, “it’s lost. So you have nothing to lose. I bet if you were to make the faeries a deal, they might help you out here.”

  “What kind of deal?”

  “I don’t know.” I thought a moment. “Maybe you could say, if they somehow can return the pedometer, you would agree to acknowledge there might just be something to all this faery stuff.You know, give them the chance, if they want to take it, to prove to you they exist.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” she said.

  “But, KP, if you do this, and it’s totally up to you if you want to . . . if something does happen, you need to accept the responsibility of it. If you’re going to ask for a favor, you can’t go back on your word. ’Cause that would be really messed up, you know what I mean? To promise one thing and do another?”

  “Okay,” she said simply. “I’ll try it. Do I need to . . . say it out loud?”

  “Oh, God. I don’t know. I’m new at all this stuff myself.” I considered it. “You could probably just say it in your head.” That’s what I do.

  She closed her eyes briefly. “Okay. Done. Now let’s head back to the car. It’s hot enough to swim—I wanna hit the beach.”

  18

  Guinness, Faery Tales, and the Slopes of Ben Bulben

  Faeries, come take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind, run on the top of the disheveled tide, and dance upon the mountains like a flame.

  —WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, THE LAND OF HEART’S DESIRE

  I WAS sad to leave the fort, especially with so many unanswered questions. Who built this fort and why? What was it used for? Was there a battle here? History, I decided, is the ultimate tease. It gets you interested, then leaves you wanting more.

  Back at the car we looked high and low for that stupid pedometer. On top of the car, under the car, on the road, in the trunk. Finally, we admitted defeat.

  “Maybe it’s in the parking lot of the hostel,” KP said, seeing my subtle look of disappointment. So, maybe I was hoping for a little faery magic.

  We were hot from our hike and the sun was beating down. We stopped at a sandy beach, busy with tourists. Ever prepared, KP changed into her suit. I hadn’t even thought to bring one on the trip. Dummy. I’d just go swimming in my clothes, I decided, rolling up my yoga pants and stripping down to my tank top. As we waded into the clear water I was grateful for the extra material—the weather may have been hot, but the water was cruelly frigid.

  “My feet are stinging,” I noticed after a minute.

  “Mine, too,” KP said.

  “It’s because our nerves are slowly dying.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “We really should just dunk under.”

  “Come on, girls,” KP said, lowering her voice, “you’ve just got to splash a little water on your neck. Adjust the thermostat!”

  “Very funny.”

  “Let’s do it on three.”

  She reached out to take my hand.

  “One . . . Oh, Jesus, this is cold . . .”

  “Two . . .”

  “Three!” We squealed, pulling each other under. We didn’t have to say it, but we both knew. We needed to swim, not for us.

  This swim was for him.

  Clean, showered, and dinnered, we headed out for our last night in Doolin. We’d had a little wine with dinner, and that tended to bring out the “the Talker” in my sister. I was familiar with the Talker, not only because I’d been at the butt end of it throughout my life on vacations with my sister, but also because I had a little Talker in me, too. We got it from our father. The Talker is most interested in talking to strangers and pursues an interesting conversation with passionate abandon. Luring the stranger into a conversational trap, the Talker will speak with them the length of the night, obliviously ignoring the people who matter most—in this case, me. This night, KP had snared a group of three men—Sam, Rory, and Allen, and they were tour guides, the kind that lead busloads of people around the Cliffs of Moher. As a result, they were actually interested to hear what had brought me to Ireland.

  “Whatever,” I said lightly, after explaining. “Nobody believes in faeries anymore. I might as well sit back and enjoy the Guinness.”

  But Sam looked especially serious, even while the other two snickered. They noticed and quieted down, turning to him.

  “Sam believes in faeries, don’t you, Sam?”

  “No,” he said, flushing slightly. “I mean, not really.”

  “Oh, come on, Sam, tell her the story, the one you told us.”

  I looked at Sam expectantly.

  “Oh, well, you know. It was just something weird, you know? Like something that happened that was a bit off. Unexplainable.”

  “Tell me, please. Really, I’d love to hear it.”

  Sam told of his upbringing by a devout Catholic grandfather. But despite being religious, his grandfather was constantly telling them stories about faeries.

  “Granddad,” they’d ask, “do you believe in faeries?”

  “No,” would come his gruff reply. “And they’ve the nerve to exist all the same.” Sam’s family lived near Ben Bulben, a “hollow hill” that’s thought to be a place of the faeries, and before Sam and his brother went out to play on the slopes, their grandfather would warn them to be careful. It wasn’t them falling off the mountain that he was afraid of. He was wor
ried that they might fall in.

  As a teenager Sam would meet his friends on the mountain, to spend the night drinking and camping in the woods. On one such night, he’d agreed to meet his friend at an old miner’s shack so they could find a place to camp from there. But the time came and went, and there was no sign of Sam’s friend. Darkness fell and it started to rain, so Sam figured he’d just spend the night in the shack and head home in the morning. The rain pelted down through the night, and all alone in the creepy old cabin, Sam was nervous, but he eventually drifted to sleep.

  He woke in the middle of the night to the creaking of the cabin door, and sat up to find two men standing in the doorway. One was tall and slender with long hair blown wild by wind and rain, and the other was a stocky little man between four and five feet tall. They seemed very surprised to see Sam there. Sam couldn’t think how on earth two men had ended up at the old miner’s shack in the middle of the night. Unless they had a tractor or something. Now that he was listening, he thought he could definitely hear the sound of a tractor idling outside the door. After a moment, the tall man seemed to recover himself.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello,” Sam replied.

  The shorter man then whispered something to the taller man, who cleared his throat.

  “Do you mind if we ask who you are?”

  “Uh, my name is Sam Healy, of the Sligo Healys.”

  The tall man considered his answer, then turned to the shorter man, as if to explain.

  “He says his name is Sam Healy, and he’s of the Sligo Healys.”

  The stout man nodded gruffly and murmured once again to the tall man.

  “And do you mind if I ask who your father is?” the taller man questioned.