Faery Tale (20 page)

I was beginning to wonder the same thing myself. But as I took a seat on a nearby bench to better observe them, I began to relax. These guys were okay. On closer inspection they looked like teachers, lorry drivers, barristers. Nearly all the men had close-cut hair, many sprinkled with salt and pepper, and they were sporting sophisticated driving boots, T-shirts with long sleeves underneath, and thick leather jackets. They looked more like a bunch of giant horse jockeys than the rough-and-tumble, more menacing bikers you might see in the States.

The Irish Sea was black as tea, and even as the giant steamer cut through its choppy waves it wasn't hard to imagine how many times, on how many different boats, people had made this journey. All around me I could hear the bikers laughing uproariously, clapping each other on the back. Looking out over the gray horizon, I breathed it all in, and wondered what story I would find, what awaited me on this faery-haunted island.

 

Nearly three hours later, the island appeared before me. As the clouds broke I was met by emerald green trees, blue sky, and colorfully painted houses. The feel of the place was Victorian, I decided, my eyes settling on a light pink home with several steeply gabled roofs. I made my way down the ramp to collect my heavy pack from the luggage claim area, heaving it onto my back with a grunt. Without a doubt, this trip was going to give me sciatica.

I was lucky enough to have my own little dorm room on the second floor of the school. After an impromptu nap and improvised dinner, I set out for a bit of exploration. Across the street I noticed a ruin overlooking the ocean—sandy beaches strewn here and there with large boulders and flat rocks. I looked at the plaque posted by the ruin:

How fantastically creepy. I was sleeping across the street from an ancient place of execution. The ravens certainly seemed to have gotten word, as they circled overhead calling to one another. Combined with the evening chill off the ocean, it was enough to send me back inside for the night.

 

The next morning I walked into town to visit Castle Rushen, which had stairways too dark and foreboding for me to even want to climb them. The town itself was charm personified, with exquisite white-washed buildings and curving streets. Between the buildings burst brilliant flashes of blue ocean.

Mostly, I slept. I slept all the time. I literally couldn't keep my eyes open. It was utterly against my will, and I couldn't explain it—like I was under some sort of bizarre enchantment. I walked around feeling spacey, light-headed. There were so many things I wanted to do, but there seemed to be perpetual confusion within me about where to start, when to go, and how to get there, and every time I tried to get up and get motivated, I fell asleep. It made no sense; I had gotten plenty of sleep prior to my arrival on Man. I am not, and have never been, a napper—it makes me feel too inherently guilty about all the other things I should be doing. And still I couldn't keep alert or awake. I began, of course, to blame the faeries.

“I don't know
how
you expect me to do anything in this state,” I fumed, as I sat on the college lawn overlooking the ocean. “What is this about exactly, huh?”

Eat some clover
.

Why was I feeling like I should eat some clover?

Above me the ravens circled. I ambled over to a patch of clover growing alongside the dunes by the beach and plucked it, giving it a rinse with my water bottle, supposing it was worth a try. It tasted clean and lemony. It could have been my imagination, but after a few minutes I actually began to feel better—more alert, a little more grounded. Nonetheless, those two days were some of the longest of my life. I wasn't sorry to be moving on. Predictably, I fell asleep on the bus ride to the north of the island. I awoke as we were approaching Douglas. The bus had passed right over Fairy Bridge, from what I could see on the map. I'd slept right through it, meaning I hadn't even had the opportunity to greet the faeries as Ninefh had directed. I was beginning to feel like this island was conspiring to make me
earn
something before it would concede to my demands.

The town of Ramsey was nearly an hour by bus, the route taking me up the coast. This was the most I'd seen of the island so far, and it was breathtaking—undulating hills, grassy fields, forested glens with rushing waterfalls, sandy and pebbled beaches with towering cliffs.

Evening was setting in as we reached Maughold, the tiny village where I'd be staying, and the tall trees that lined the road were filled with songbirds chirping the evening rites. I found the office of the Venture Centre, and met one of its founders, Mike Read, at the check-in desk.

As Mike showed me to the private cabin I'd reserved across the street, I saw it overlooked the fields and, farther out, the ocean. It was rustic, to be sure, but comfortable.

“Now, you're going to be on your own for tonight, so it'll be pretty quiet over here,” he warned. “But tomorrow we have a big bunch of guys coming for the TT, so hopefully they'll keep you entertained.”

Oh, lord
. “Fantastic.” I managed a smile.

That night I dined on leftover cheese, some Irish whiskey I'd purchased in Castletown, and the three packets of biscuits that had been lovingly laid out in my cabin. With the bustling town of Ramsey two miles away, loneliness set in. It was dead quiet, and I'd been on my own without having much more than a passing conversation with anyone for four days. Compared to life in Manhattan, I felt like the lone survivor of a nuclear holocaust.

The next morning I headed out, sans map, to try and acquaint myself with the faeries living in Ballure Glen.

It was only down the main road a stretch, and I'd decided since I was crap at reading maps anyway I should try a new experiment—hiking by intuition. Normally (and especially in high-altitude areas where there are serious mountains and dangerous animals), this would be unadvisable. But here on the island, it was manageable. I kept walking until I came to a sparkling reservoir and decided to hike its loop, which I was unpleasantly surprised to find was dense with terrifying pines. There's simply no other way to describe such a desolate, utterly disturbing forest, one that left no question in my mind:
there be dark elves in yonder woods!
Thankfully, the loop took me alongside, not through it.

As I headed into an open meadow, I decided it was time to begin.

“Okay, fair folk, I'm all yours. Take me to your leader!” I laughed. “Seriously though. Today I'm going to let you take me wherever you think I need to go,” I said aloud.

Ninefh had said I'd have nothing to worry about so long as I followed my intuition, so I did my best to quiet my mind and follow my instinct on which way to go, without questioning myself. I'm sure it was my imagination, but I really felt like I was being watched. Not in a bad way, just . . . noticeably. When I came to a fork in the trail, I paused, considering both options until a stone ruin nestled at the bottom of a sweeping hill in the distance caught my eye. It was a good distance off but I headed toward it, curious. After several minutes I reached it to find the walls intact, but the roof, windows, and door long gone. There was a gnarled tree by the edge of what might have been the side yard, and I touched its trunk. I had the feeling that whoever lived here had loved that tree, and I wondered how long they'd been gone. I felt a little spooked, yet stepped inside to find it was clear and clean with a simple stone floor. But something about the place gave me the creeps. Someone had left a cairn of rocks piled in the center of the room. And on the middle of the floor, a bizarre circular drawing had been etched in the stone.

Beating a hasty retreat back downhill, I continued on, forcing my feet to follow a wide path that ran through a dark, forbidding pine forest, ostensibly more foreboding than the one I'd passed before, because it looked to be the quickest way back to civilization. As the woods began to swallow me, I felt more and more certain that I
really didn't
want to meet the faeries that lived in these woods.
I sure could use an advocate now
. . .

I sang softly and tried to relax, but something was building. I felt the gnawing feeling that there was something right behind me, something that wanted to hurt me.

I was being followed by someone, and he was gaining on me. In a flash, I understood. It wasn't the faeries I needed to worry about—it was
people
that could cause me real harm. My heart pumping, I reached back and deftly pulled my pepper spray from my pack, putting it in my pocket, finger on the trigger. The next moment, I turned instinctively to look over my shoulder and nearly screamed.

In the middle of the dark pine forest, a blue men's jacket was hanging, suspended from a dead branch.

When hikers drop things, often a Good Samaritan will pick it up and hang it from a branch or signpost on the trail. But this jacket wasn't on the trail. It was hanging there, in the middle of the woods. Maybe it didn't make sense, but all I knew was in that moment, I wanted to get as far away from that jacket as I possibly could.

Leaving the trail, I stumbled through the woods, my clothing getting caught on branches until I finally found my way back to the reservoir. There were people milling around, and a fisherman was packing up for the day. I'd been hiking a good four hours. I went back down to the glass-framed map to figure out where I had been and something caught my interest. There was a point on the map marked “Site of Betsy Crowe's Croft,” which looked to be in a field located past the top of the pine plantation, across the road. I'd been there. But who was Betsy Crowe? A local hero of sorts? Perhaps a female politician? She must be someone of importance if her house was marked on the map.There was something in this, I could feel it. I knew I needed to unearth the story of Betsy Crowe. It wouldn't be until I got home, at the end of my faery-hunting journey, that the true significance of the blue jacket would begin to take shape.

 

I was unpacking my hiking pack at the Venture Centre when I heard a great rumbling in the distance gradually approaching—the slow roar of motorcycles, an entire pack of them, pulling into the lot in front of my little cabin. It appeared my company had arrived, just as Mike promised. I peeked out my window and counted eight bikers, all clad in racing leathers and helmets. Well, this sure wouldn't be boring. I was just finishing dinner when Mike brought them into the kitchen on their tour of the facilities. There were seven men ranging in age from midthirties to late forties, and the eighth looked to be about twenty.

“This is the kitchen,” Mike explained. “And
this
is Signe.”

“Hi.” I gave an all-encompassing wave. “I appreciate you coming all this way to entertain me. It's been pretty quiet here so far.”

They laughed. We were off to a good start.

“I'm John,” said a man with sandy, cropped hair and keen blue eyes, extending his hand. “And this is Joe, Paul, Huw, Sam, Wol, John, and Mark.”

No way I was going to be able to remember all those names.

“We're, ah, planning on going to the pub later, if you'd like to come along,” John offered.

“Oh! Well. I . . . I was thinking I'd . . . I have a lot of work to do, actually. I was planning on just staying here . . .”

“Work?!”
John threw up his hands, completely exasperated. “What could you
possibly
be
working
on that's better than a pint?”

The man had a point.

“Okay. Yes.” I surprised myself. “I'd love to come.”

“Good then!” John exclaimed. “We'll come round you up when it's time.”

And that's how I came to be friends with the bikers.

That night we walked into town together and got to know one another over . . . more than one pint. Dark-haired Sam was nineteen and his father, sporting a shaved head and goatee, was Joe. Sam had ridden on the back of Joe's bike on the trip, since his dad wasn't quite ready to have him out on the road on his own. Joe, John (who'd first introduced himself), and Wol, a rather quiet man with gray hair, blue eyes, and a closely trimmed beard, were brothers. Then there was Paul, a burly man with curly, dark hair and glasses, Huw, a blond-haired, blue-eyed EMT, and Mark, a compact man with an easy smile. Last but certainly not least, there was “other John,” a tall, lanky bloke with dark hair and a weathered face. “You can call me Big John.” He grinned.

Except for Wol, who was from Wales, the bikers hailed from Birmingham, England, and came every year to the Tourist's Trophy, the TT. I got plenty of good-hearted jeers as I told them about my purpose on the Isle of Man. As they taught me about the TT, I began to understand that this was more than just several days of racing—it was a huge social and cultural event. With the conversation flowing so freely, before I knew it, it was closing time. We packed ourselves into two taxis and headed back to the Centre. For the first time in what felt like forever, I wasn't lonely. And when John said, “Come on now, Sig. It's time to eat some chicken curry,” I knew I'd found a new home. A little drunk and in soaring spirits, we fell upon the huge vat of delicious curry, regaling one another with stories from our pasts.

The next morning I woke up to stirrings in the kitchen and got up to fix some yogurt and fruit. I patted Wol on the shoulder, who was standing over the stove sautéing mushrooms, and said a cheery good morning to the rest of the boys, who were sitting around chatting and drinking tea.

“You'll have a full English, won't you, Sig?” John asked.

“Full English? Like as in a full English breakfast?”