Faery Tale

by Signe Pike

  Gelling was asked by prosecutors about a jacket, one which he had washed the morning after the murder. He claimed that toffee had melted and stained the pocket of the coat the previous week. The prosecutor challenged that it was blood. The coat was wet from the shoulders down to the tail, quite a thorough cleaning job for a stain in a pocket. I read on, my heart in my throat.

  The jacket in question was blue.

  A traveler walks to an abandoned cottage and then begins to fear for her life on a trail in the forest, just prior to seeing a blue jacket hanging in the woods. She is perhaps fifty yards away from the place where a woman was murdered 121 years before.

  The evidence against Gelling was, after a grueling inquest, found to be circumstantial, and despite the weight of suspicion he was never found guilty of murder.

  He never even went to trial.

  All I know is the terror I felt and what I saw. I’ve since spent many nights lying awake, thinking about Betsy Crowe and the blue jacket, struggling for closure. Each time comes the vision of that tree—the old gnarled tree that stands stooped by the ruins—and the feeling that whoever had lived in that house had loved that tree. Who knows? It certainly wouldn’t have been uncommon at the time—perhaps Betsy Crowe was a believer in faeries.

  As I focused next on the subject of the black feather, pieces began to fall into place, little by little. While crows (ravens, Irish croachs, or whatever you want to call them) were a most common bird in Ireland and the United Kingdom, they were certainly not the only birds. I’ve stumbled across many feathers in my lifetime of woods walking—turkey feathers, jay feathers, cardinal feathers, pheasant feathers, osprey feathers—but never so many black feathers, dropped in my path, in a period of three months. I wanted to know why I was continually finding them at faery sites throughout my journey—and why had I been compelled to use them as part of what could only be described as offerings?

  In folklore, crows almost always appeared as messengers. Their purpose was to relay a message from the world of the dead, the afterlife, or the divine, to a mortal. To my surprise, I learned that Celtic folklore in particular was filled with them.

  In the Celtic pantheon, the crow was sacred to a being called the Morrigan, and I was embarrassed to say I’d overlooked her. When I’d first come across the Morrigan (in Peter Berresford Ellis’s myth The Ever-Living Ones), she was introduced as the Great Queen of Battles. But when you look at the etymology of the name, it actually translates quite literally to “Great Queen” (mór, great; rígan, queen). In the eleventh century, when The Book of Invasions was finally transcribed on paper, the Morrigan was listed as one of the Tuatha Dé Danann. But as I traced the mythological thread further back, I discovered that the Morrigan was known by another name: Anann. And Anann was known by another name, too.

  Danu.

  I felt like I’d just opened a set of Russian nesting dolls. Danu was, of course, the bringer of all life, the biggest deal in the Celtic pantheon; she was the Celtic Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed. And, according to myth, Danu was “the mother” of the race we so fondly call “the faeries.”

  I had unwittingly been honoring the ultimate queen of the faeries at every significant site I visited. And in light of that, I couldn’t help but wonder—were my car accident (which cost me money) in Chagford and the death by drowning of my iPod after my trip up Snaefell (which cost me money) literally a form of Celtic votive tribute like that which the old deities were used to receiving? Or was this simply another validation, to prove that their hand was in it all along? More than that, though, I wondered if I hadn’t been put to work on a greater purpose. Awakening, connecting something in those places that needed to be brought to the surface once more. Typical to faery, it was illuminating and confusing all at once.

  There were so many other links and commonalities I stumbled upon after arriving home.

  Regarding the mysterious terracing on Glastonbury Tor, the Glastonbury Abbey website says, “If the maze on the Tor is real, human labor formed it four or five thousand years ago, during the period of the vast ritual works that created Stonehenge.” And it bore a striking similarity to the terracing I noticed on the hills of Fairy Glen on Skye. It was an intriguing connection. What were these forgotten places, so long ago?

  Then there were the shapes of the hills themselves.The Glastonbury Tor, Doon Hill, and Fairy Glen all shared the same surprisingly conical forms. There was something off-putting, too, about the mound shape of Hango Hill on the Isle of Man. When we compared photos of Fairy Glen to those of archeological sites of discovered hill forts in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Eric and I agreed: buried under the layers of earth and sediment that we now know as Fairy Glen was undoubtedly an ancient hill fort. On the Isle of Man a burial mound known as Cronk ny Merriu (“Hill of the Dead”) was excavated and found to contain several Bronze Age artifacts. Cronk ny Merriu bore an eerie resemblance to Fairy Glen as well. And Hango Hill, I learned, hadn’t been excavated but was rumored to be the site of an ancient burial mound as well. As I did more research, I found many claims that Doon Hill in Aberfoyle looked more like an artificial mound than it did a natural hill. And its name, Doon, was derived from “dún,” which I learned is the Gaelic word for a man-made mound (Dún Aengus, for example). If these were in fact ancient pagan places, it would be a short step in local lore as time wore on, and memories faded, to relegate them to the faery kingdom.

  Whatever lay beneath, it blew my mind that people assumed these hills were just hills. But then again, would I ever want to see them excavated to uncover their secrets? As Eddie Lenihan said, “That’s not my property. That’s theirs.” These places are so deeply ancient, so incredibly sacred. Perhaps sometimes it’s best to let secrets lie.

  As the shorter days of autumn approached, things were still unfolding. Thumbing through a book I’d skimmed very early on in my search, when places like the Isle of Man were just names without images and memories attached, I came across something that made me smile. “Herbalism is a specialty of Manx faeries,” Edain McCoy wrote in A Witch’s Guide to Faery Folk. “And some of them can be induced to lead humans to cures.”

  Eat some clover, I’d been instructed in Castletown. Perhaps I should have given more credit to the faeries when I began to feel less disoriented after munching clover on the Isle of Man.

  The next day I did some more research on Ireland—in particular, the fort we’d visited on Black Head, outside of Doolin. I’d been searching for its proper name—not an easy task considering there are hundreds of unnamed forts in the Burren alone. So I was actually shocked when I managed to find it. The old fort on Black Head was called Cathair Dhuin Irghuis. The Fort of Irghuis. I dug through my mythology books, all my books on Celtic lore. Nothing. Finally, in Archaeology of the Burren: Prehistoric Forts and Dolmens in North Clare, by Thomas Johnson Westropp, something caught my eye. My pulse raced as I scanned the page.

  In the depths of Irish prehistoric legend, it was stated that a Fir Bolg chief named Irghus had ruled the Headland of Burren.

  All this was my kingdom.

  His name had been preserved on that lonely fort tucked into the limestone slabs of Black Head. Did the lost and weary pagan chief still haunt his earthly domain? In my mind’s eye, I could still see the redheaded man with the warm brown eyes standing next to me on that hillside in Ireland. Could I really have been communicating with the ancient Fir Bolg chieftain Irghus? If that were so, the Fir Bolgs certainly weren’t the monsters that The Book of Invasions had claimed. I read that limestone is often considered by the paranormal community to be a substance that somehow amplifies spiritual activity, and of course, the Burren is almost solely composed of limestone. But what about the shells from the Aran Islands I felt compelled to leave—what was the connection between the two? Perhaps that piece to the puzzle lay amid the massive stones of Dún Aengus on Inishmore.

  Aengus was a Celtic god, son of Dagda, and one of the Tuatha Dé Danann. But I was shocked to discover something that I had missed. Pr
ying further I found what I was looking for: Dún Aengus was originally thought to be a Fir Bolg fort. Perhaps the Fir Bolgs were indeed pursued and fled from across Ireland in droves to their stronghold—one of the Fir Bolg’s most powerful and significant forts? I then found a small citation in The Book of Invasions that stated the Tuatha had allowed the Fir Bolgs to live on in Connacht—an area of Ireland that includes Doolin and the Aran Islands. Dún Aengus and Cathair Dhuin Irghuis—the link I’d thought was only a product of my imagination—had a basis in fact. Well, in so much as The Book of Invasions could be taken as fact. Nonetheless, it was a mystifying testament to the power of human intuition.

  So what are faeries, exactly? Truth be told, I don’t know if this is a riddle any mortal can solve—I don’t know that we’re allowed to. The best we can do is gather the clues we’re permitted to glimpse and try to draw a conclusion from there. My personal beliefs, while born from skepticism, had transformed through a learned ability to listen to my intuition—as well as to the world around me. Everything speaks if we can only learn how to listen.

  It could be what we call faeries are unseen beings that are connected to the energies of the earth.There may be as many types of “faeries” as there are species of animals on our planet. Through interactions over time, we classify them as best we can: trolls, gnomes, leprechauns, flower faeries, the list goes on and on. But they are all energy, just like we are. Different types of energy. And then we have the lordly race also known as the Gentry, the Hidden People, or the Shining Ones. Far superior to us in knowledge, wisdom, and perhaps even their capacity to love, the faery advocate assigned to me in Glastonbury would have been one such being. They are the “nobility” of the faery world—once revered as gods by the Celts. As far as their physicality, I can only speculate. Ninefh had described faeries as spirits that were partially incarnated on the physical plane but lacking in one element. Could that explain how they were able to shimmer into our physical world and make things disappear and reappear at whim? Like the pedometer, the tent poles? Like a black feather in your path? The Aborigines of Australia believe (today!) that humans possess the ability to shape-shift, and there are those among their tribes who practice shape-shifting at will, or so they say. So would it be such a stretch to reconsider the bird in the gardens of Glastonbury? You know I’m not the bird, I’d heard in my head. Or to remember the white-haired man staring off into the distance in the fields of Auldyn Glen?

  So who were the Fir Bolgs, the Tuatha Dé Danann? Perhaps we’ll never know. But what I do know is that the beings we call faeries can sweep into our lives if we only invite them, to show us how to live better, love better, treat our planet better. They can teach us, perhaps, natural ways to heal, and maybe help us come to a better understanding of what our bodies truly need. Necromancers of the spirit world, they show us how to honor our own magic, myths, and legends: in keeping these things alive, we are all a part of the faery faith.

  I should have known the faeries would save the best for last. Now that I could recognize it, their fingerprints could be seen all over their handiwork—like magicians, they prefer to unveil mysteries with a masterful flourish.

  Raven had sent me a package of pictures from Glastonbury along with the CD of our nighttime ceremony as promised, but I was on deadline and it had remained unopened. As my deadline approached, I got an early morning phone call.

  “Signe,” Raven said, “I got the strongest feeling this morning that I needed to call you right away. I’m supposed to tell you this: if you sing, you’ll find something that you’re missing right now, for your book.”

  So of course I tried to sing.

  I felt like Will Farrell in Elf: I’m singing . . . ’cause the faeries told me, that if I’m singing, I’ll find something I am looking for . . .

  Meanwhile the unopened package sat there, staring at me accusingly as I worked at my computer. Finally guilted into action, I put my earphones in and let the recording of the ceremony play. After all, what kind of faery researcher was I, if I didn’t even review all my evidence? Frankly, I had been embarrassed to hear myself letting it all hang out for the faeries that night in Glastonbury, but I found that I relished being able to experience that night again. I was typing away as I listened somewhat absentmindedly, smiling here and there, when I heard something I simply could not explain.

  Turning up the volume, I played it back. At the fifty-four-minute mark, just after we had finishing singing, just as Raven was looking out into the night with tears in her eyes, saying, “They are definitely here,” there was flute music playing.

  Pan flute music to be exact. It sounded somewhat ethereal, disembodied. But it was unmistakable.There was no one else there, and hadn’t been the whole night. We had the garden reserved. We certainly hadn’t heard anything with our ears—Raven would have definitely said something like, “Oh my God, Signe! Can you hear that? Faery music!” To which I would have rolled my eyes. And we were too far away from the bustling shops of Glastonbury for music to have somehow carried over. Even in that case, we would’ve heard it in real time.

  I immediately called Raven to tell her—she’d listened to the recording and not even picked up on it. She was over the moon. I played it for Eric, for my mother. Everyone agreed—it was certainly pan flute music. The pedometer in Ireland, the tent poles—I knew faeries were notorious for being able to take things from our physical world and then being able to somehow bring them back. Was this why the recording had disappeared from Raven’s iPod that night, only to show up at the end of our trip with the bizarre 3/3/09 marked as the recording date? If so, I wondered what else we might have captured on that recording, prior to its disappearance. If there was something else, it was something we weren’t meant to have. And maybe it didn’t matter. They had left this one thing.

  Somehow, we had captured the music of the faeries.

  When it came to my father, my trip had created the breakthrough I was seeking. Though perhaps typical to the ways in which the faery world worked, it was not in a way I’d expected. There was no magical cure for the pain of death. When you lose someone, the pain never goes away. After a while, though, if you’re living your life right, it does begin to lessen, one day at a time. Sometimes I think I’m okay, I’m getting over it. I think, I’m healing, I can do this. And then I have a bad day—I get into an argument with a friend, or I maybe think I’m losing my mind writing a book about faeries. Those days or nights, when I’m already laid bare, that’s when the grief hits me the hardest. It takes hold of me and soon I am rocking in the mess of it all. He was a complicated, sad, beautiful, angry mess, and one hell of a father. What I realize now is that you can’t cure a loss; you can only honor it. And as the rocking ceases, I know that I am honoring my father simply by living my life. By pursuing my dreams.

  The faeries, it seems, like to tie up all their endings. Now that this adventure was over, where would they leave their messenger, when all the notes have been passed along? What would life be like, here in Charleston, now that I’d peeked behind the veil of possibility?

  Sunday, October 4, was a full moon. I watched twilight fall and the bright globe of it rise from the sunroom. Outside the temperature had been cooling; the nights now brought with them a welcome chill. Through the screen door I could hear the peepers still peeping—louder perhaps, now that they felt the end was near. Autumn was coming. I grabbed some chocolate from a drawer in the kitchen and slid back the patio door, stepping barefoot into the night. The red pine stood tall and thick, sheltering our yard with its towering branches. The broken stone bench by the shed glowed in the moonlight, and at the far end of the yard, the leaves of the river birch rustled in the wind. The thick foliage from our wax myrtles had grown dense over the summer, sheltering the yard from our neighbors. I twisted open the paper and foil on the chocolate, breaking it into chunks between my fingers. I placed some on the bench, some beneath the pine, some at the foot of the shaggy old river birch, singing softly.

  I wasn’t afr
aid of the night, though these southern shadows sometimes cast themselves in dark and haunting ways. I was afraid of what might happen to me, to my belief, if I tried this in my own backyard and it failed. But now I knew there were many kinds of magic in life. Like the magic of simply being present. The magic of connecting with an old friend. The magic of laughter, of nature, of curiosity, of adventure.

  The enchantment we weave into our lives ripples into the lives of others. No matter how small a change, it can inspire if we can only learn to listen, hear it, catch it, obey it—one day we wake up and life can never be the same again.

  In that moment I knew I had a magic all my own here in Charleston. I stepped back onto the patio and sat on the cool stone, letting my gaze soften, watching the wax myrtles ruffle in the breeze. Not expecting, just waiting.

  A quote came to mind, something I’d come across this past summer from T. S. Eliot. I smiled in the darkness. Now I knew where to put it.

  We shall not cease from exploration.

  And at the end of all our exploring

  Will be to arrive where we started

  And know the place for the first time.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book wouldn’t have been possible without the help of many faery godpeople.

  To my mother, Linda Johanson, and father, Alan S. Pike, who always urged me to write.You’ve given me endless untold beautiful moments, and so much love—thank you. And to Kirsten Pike—for being a best friend and an older sister to boot.

  To my literary agent, Yfat Reiss Gendell—a dear friend and the quintessential professional, who possesses the quickest wit, most effortless sense of style in everything, and the brightest spirit. The team at Perigee has wowed me with their warmth, drive, and collaborative spirit. I owe endless thanks to my editor, Marian Lizzi, for guiding me with unwavering vision, talent, and belief. Much gratitude goes out to publisher John Duff, marketing director Patrick Nolan, and publicity manager Melissa Broder. To editorial assistant Christina Lundy for her kind and polished professionalism, managing editor Jennifer Eck, and cover designer Andrea Ho. Last but never least, my gratitude goes out to the Penguin sales force, whom I’ve seen firsthand are simply the best in the business.