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A quote: “Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.” ~~ William Butler Yeats
I’ll start with a story …
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As only heir and with no pending prospects of success, going back to Ireland to run Grandah’s pub seemed doable.
Customers are cool. The oldest farts have some interesting tales, even if you need subtitles because of accents and BAC.
James is different. Comes in late a few nights a week, sits quietly, nurses a pint then leaves at closing. One night I ask, “what’s your story, Jimmy?”
“I was young and bored and said so to my dah and left to seek fame and fortune. One night, I was waylaid by highway men and left for dead.
I awoke in a fine bed, in a finer room. I wasn’t alone.
She slides out from between the sheets clothed only in long auburn hair, smiling as she crosses the room and as her hand slides across her soft white belly I know, know what’s been happening. Yet I’m bewitched. She sits at the spinning wheel, a side glance at me as I start to get up. She gasps and I see she has pricked her finger and the drop of blood … it isn’t red. “
Jimmy finishes off his drink, “I don’t know how long I was there. Time had no meaning in that bedroom. And she probably thought it a fair exchange.” He looks at me again. “Centuries ago I told that story. Told it for drink. Told it for meals.” He shrugs, “And as years passed the story has flipped to where she’s the one woken by my kiss or, more sinister, that I raped her sleeping body. No matter anymore. I just wait for her return, that she’ll take back the gift she gave me.”
He rises to leave, “be careful of what you wish for.”
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license
When I was a kid, I always dreamed of going to a magical world like the characters of my favorite novels. I’d walk into every fog bank I encountered, check out the back of every closet and wardrobe, and wander around down to the basement of every school I went to, hoping that somewhere, somehow, I’d stumble across a gate to a world of wonder.
By the time I graduated, I was getting the picture that it wasn’t going to happen. Even if there were magical worlds and gates to them, I wasn’t one of the Chosen Few who got to find them. My life was fated to be ordinary and mundane, and I’d better get used to the idea if I wanted to flourish instead of being one of those losers who end up wasting their lives chasing after Adventure and Excitement.
So I resigned myself to a workaday job and the duties of adulthood. Yet that little voice of longing could never quite be silenced, just shoved to the back of my mind where I didn’t have to think about it too hard.
Or rather I hadn’t, until the day I won an all-expenses-paid trip to Scotland. I’d entered the contest on a lark, not really expecting to have any real chance.
So here I am, standing before a ruined castle in the process of being reclaimed by nature. The air crackles with an electric tension, the sort that would often presage the opening of a magical gate or the arrival of a magical being in those books I loved to read as a child.
I look at the entryway, the darkened space beyond. Should I proceed? Will I finally walk into the magical world of my childhood dreams? Or will I just be walking into trouble, maybe the physical dangers of a long-abandoned structures, or maybe a trespassing charge in a foreign country?
Phoenix says: Elara pressed her face to the cold stone windowsill, watching the mist swirl around the ancient towers. The castle had been her prison for three years now, ever since the plague took her parents and left her ward to cruel Uncle Mortimer.
“Child.” The voice came like wind through leaves.
She turned to find a figure of moonlight and shadow standing in her chamber—tall, ethereal, with eyes like deep forest pools.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
“I am what your heart calls for in the darkest hours.” The fairy extended a luminous hand. “Come away from this place of sorrow. The waters know your name, and the wild woods sing lullabies your mother once hummed.”
Through the window, Elara could see her uncle’s lamp moving through the corridors below, searching. Always searching, always angry.
“Will it hurt?” she asked.
“Less than staying.”
She took the fairy’s hand, feeling warmth flood through her fingers. Together they stepped toward the window, and the mist welcomed them in an embrace, carrying them away from towers built on tears and screams into a world where children’s laughter echoed
Cameron says: It’s an old castle that was bought, paid for and shipped in sections to my plot of land in the middle of nowhere. I knew once it was all set up that I was going to have to deal with the curious and rather than drive them off, I figured I’d start charging. They come through three times a day to gawk in wonder at the meticulously restored interior. My sister got her licenses and we started serving food as well.
The business is profitable and I’m slowly healing the wound in my finances from the work that’s been done. No, no; not the stuff that the tourists see. I’m talking the rest of the work. There are rooms that store food, I have enough weapons in the basement to withstand a siege and the well is solidly made. Up on the roof I have the defenses against drones and the stone is reinforced to allow me decent cover to go along with the clear field of fire on the front.
Look, just because I’m a bit of a hermit and have rebuilt this place into a prepper redoubt doesn’t mean I can’t run a business until things get bad.
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