Reluctantly Charmed (14 page)

Then, just when I thought I couldn’t take any more humiliation, wallowing in the depths of despair, I blurted out, “David Hasselhoff.” The room went quiet as all heads turned toward me, surprised that I, the meeting mute, had spoken. It was like I was hovering over myself; it was an out-of-body experience. I cleared my throat. “David Hasselhoff”—was I really going to say this?—“is sitting on a star in space, and he takes a bite out of a Starshoot and he literally explodes into space, becoming one of the stars, and maybe, like, his face is on the stars. An actual
star
shoot. And the line, the line is . . .”

I was reaching. I turned desperately to Matthew for help.

Matthew cleared his throat and calmly turned to the Little Prince. “The Hoff has it. Do you?”

Colin stepped forward, about to gag me. Matthew put his hand to his mouth in absolute shock at what we’d just said, at what we’d just presented.

“Hasselhoff?” The Little Prince’s eyes narrowed. He looked interested.

“The Hoff.” My voice was high-pitched and shaky.

“You could have somezing here.” He looked at his watch. “I have to go. I have to catch a flight back to Stuttgart.” He said “Stuttgart” like there was too much spit in his mouth. “I’ll be back in a veek. Vork on ze Hasselhoff concept.”

He pirouetted out the door, and we slumped onto the table.

“David Hasselhoff!” Matthew looked like he’d been hit by one of those red lifesaver thingies they carry in
Baywatch
.

“What a bad idea. I’m so sorry.” I felt faint.

“Well, well, do you know, it doesn’t matter anymore. We just have to make this work. The agency needs this campaign to work—budgets are low. If he wants David Hasselhoff, we’ll get him David Hasselhoff.” Colin looked decidedly optimistic, and there was a postmeeting expression on his face that I didn’t recognize. He was either having a minor stroke or there was a smile curling on his bottom lip. “Really, it is important we get this right. Good work.”

11

Listen

by Maura Ni Ghaora

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

“The Stolen Child”

By W. B. Yeats

Twice a month a Chinese woman sticks needles into my face. I pay for her services. I have a bad back, and I believe that acupuncture helps relieve muscle pain. It is an ancient Chinese tradition that I, and millions of other people around the world, believe in. It is not, however, endorsed by doctors or recognized as a science. All I know is that when the pins are removed and I get up off the table, I feel good.

How is it that we can embrace one ancient tradition and ignore others? Why is it okay to get acupuncture or reiki or to use crystals to heal a broken heart, but it’s not okay to talk about the possibility of other worlds and of spirits? Why do we roll our eyes cynically when someone mentions the banshee? Why are we so quick to dismiss Irish stories of warriors and fairies and magic places? This is our tradition, our cultural heritage, and I believe that there is a place for this mystery and richness in our modern society.

In summer, my grandmother always left the front and back doors open. The house had been built on a fairy path, you see, and they’d agreed to let my grandmother stay on if she’d let them run through. There was a fairy doctor in her village, a man who lived on the
sliabh
(mountain) and walked with a limp. He knew fairy cures. He spoke with fairies and regaled the villagers with tales of the fairy world as they’d fill his cup with
poitín
. There were stories of men falling in love with the fairy queen, of her great beauty, of eternal youth, of hurling games that lasted for days and wars that raged under cover of night. Beautiful stories of far distant lands, of love and hope and passion, a world few are lucky to glimpse.

Over the generations, fairies have disappeared from view. Content in our material lives, we have broken the dialogue we once had and built a wall between our two worlds. We have cluttered our heads with ideas and notions and alienated our senses, emotions, and purest thoughts.

But at last we’ve been given an opportunity. Some≠how, the fairies have decided to reopen dialogue with us. They’ve asked for our ears, for a chance to commune again, for a chance to be still and to feel. If there is a drop of Irish blood in you, listen to Kate McDaid. Listen to the Seven Steps. Clear your head of thoughts, and feel their message. They are listening, too.

I finally got around to reading Maura Ni Ghaora’s article. It was pretty tame stuff, all things considered. But since it had been published, she’d been ringing me and leaving lots of messages, all hinting that she had information about the Red Hag.

I’d promised myself I wouldn’t call her back. But it was Friday night, four days before the third Step was due to be published, and I had no plans. I was lying on my bed in my pajamas, with a face mask on and some deep-conditioning treatment in my hair, and I was bored.

So I crumbled and called her. The curiosity had gotten to me. I couldn’t say no to Maura Ni Ghaora.

Afterward, as I hung up the phone, I realized that the conversation hadn’t gone according to plan at all. I really needed to learn to take more control of situations. Maura Ni Ghaora was on her way over.

I had just enough time to wash my face and pin up my hair before the bell rang. Still in my pajamas, I opened the door. Maura Ni Ghaora stood on the step with her back to me. She swung around in a dramatic twirl, her platinum bobbed hair flying. She wore a camel-colored floor-length coat that encircled her protectively. Her sculpted, perfectly made-up face, frozen in time, broke into a grimace. “Kate, how wonderful to see you.” She held out a gloved hand—white leather this time. She was wearing the gold signet ring on the little finger of her left hand.

“I brought some wine.”

She glided into my flat, which suddenly looked sad and impoverished next to her glamour.

“How very bohemian.” She spoke softly, running her gloved fingers over a scarf that doubled as a throw. I’d bought it in Penneys for €2.99 two years earlier. She removed her camel coat, which looked like it cost more than all my furnishings put together, and revealed another killer power suit. This one was dark green, nipped at the waist, with a pencil skirt—timeless.

Maura perched herself on the edge of my sofa, looking distinctly uncomfortable, while I meandered around the kitchen, hunting for clean wineglasses. I was still wondering whether I’d made a mistake inviting her around, but she had information and I was curious.

I handed her a wineglass. It was cheap and clunky and looked like a foreign object in her gloved hand. She placed it on my wobbly coffee table.

“This is a lovely neighborhood,” she said awkwardly.

“I like it here. I’ve been here awhile.”

“There was a pub we used to frequent around here a long time ago. Flannery’s? It’s gone awhile. You wouldn’t remember it.”

I smiled. I’d heard about Flannery’s. It had been a notorious hangout for Irish politicians, gangsters, and businessmen, a place for cutting deals and passing brown envelopes under tables. It had been shut at least thirty years.

“Back in the heyday with Liam and Brick,” she said softly to herself, but I caught it and couldn’t resist.

“Liam and Brick?”

“Like I said, it was a long time ago.” She batted the air with her hands and shuffled uneasily in her seat, nervous that she’d spoken out of turn.

Liam and Brick were infamous, probably Ireland’s shadiest
characters. Liam McCarthy was the leader of a political party that eventually got into government. Brick was a gangster renowned for kidnapping and dismembering people. Liam’s friendship with Brick was a badly kept secret. If Liam didn’t get what he wanted, Brick got it for him. They were shady company to keep. I was both surprised and intrigued that Maura had known them.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When her eyelids flickered open, those startling blue eyes were focused on me. “What do you know about your aunt?”

“Not much.”

“She was from Knocknamee, wasn’t she?”

She spoke with such certainty that it was more of a statement than a question. I nodded, amazed that she knew. It was close to the only piece of information that I had managed to keep to myself.

“Knocknamee is considered by those in the know to be a place of great importance to the fairies. It’s a place of great natural beauty and is their most western point in Ireland.”

She spoke slowly, her words measured, as if this was a rehearsed speech. “That is the closest point to their home, Tír na nÓg.” She shivered slightly and looked at me searchingly. “Is there anything else? Anything you haven’t revealed?”

I shook my head. But I could see she didn’t believe me, that she didn’t trust me.

“Nothing?”

“No.”

“No mention of Tír na nÓg?”

Again with Tír na nÓg
, I thought. This fairy tale she seems so interested in, this mythical land of youth and warriors. Why?

“Knocknamee has been on the map as a place of importance to the fairies for a number of years, but not publicly, if you
understand what I’m saying.” She attempted to raise her eyebrows, but her forehead was so frozen nothing much happened. “People who have an interest in the other world know of its importance. There’s a village next to Knocknamee called Feakle, which is a publicized place of folklore.” She gave a low laugh. “It’s also on the map. It was home to Biddy Early, Ireland’s most notorious witch.”

Biddy Early. The name sounded familiar. “That’s the name of a pub in Kilkenny.”

“The witch came before the pub.”

“In fact, I think there’s one in Boston, too.”

“There are pubs all over the world named after her.” Maura looked annoyed that I was sidetracking her. “She’s one of Ireland’s most famous female characters. A witch, but a white witch.”

“They’re the good ones, aren’t they?”

Maura nodded.

“Biddy Early had been taken as a child. The fairies often took people for up to seven years, and then would return them to the mortal realm with powers or gifts. They gave Biddy Early the Bottle.” Maura looked at me as though I should know what the Bottle was.

I shook my head.

“The Bottle was a crystal ball of sorts, revealing the past and the future. People came from all over to discover their fate, and she was never wrong. When she died in 1874, the Bottle disappeared and was never seen again.

“Biddy Early and Kate McDaid were from neighboring villages. The fairies would have allowed only one witch or healer per village. They would have known each other—there’s no doubt about that. And Kate McDaid would have been envious of Biddy Early and the Bottle, that I’m sure of. There’s only ever been one Bottle in Ireland’s history. A number of witches but one Bottle.”

“So they knew each other? Back then, witches were into social networking?” I laughed at my own joke.

Maura didn’t. “Biddy Early was a white witch. She used her powers for good.” Smiling, she shook her head. “Your aunt was not so revered. She was more of a wicked witch.”

I laughed again. Wicked witch—it was too funny.

“They probably clashed. They both had similar powers but used them for very different things. I’ve found an old rhyme that children used to sing there.” She cleared her throat, and in a beautiful raspy tone that bounced off the walls of the flat and caused shivers to run down my spine, she started to sing:

Grab your silver and gold,

Run fast through the fields,

She’s left her big house on the hill,

The Red Hag is coming, she’s coming, she’s coming.

She’ll eat out your young,

Burn down your house,

Steal your cattle with fairy might,

The Red Hag is coming, she’s coming, she’s coming.

“She doesn’t sound very nice. The fairies? Are they nice?” I shuddered.

Maura paused and leaned toward me. “The fairies are ultimately good. They play tricks, yes, sometimes very cruel tricks, but it’s only when they see something happening that’s wrong, or something they deem to be wrong. They want to be acknowledged in our world. They know, as we should know, that it makes for a better environment.”

I swallowed hard, not sure where to look or what to think. I
shook my head and snapped back into reality. “Maura, you speak like the fairies are real, like they actually exist.”

She took her gloved hands up to her mouth and pressed them tightly against it, almost biting back words. Then she took a deep breath. “Of course they exist,” she whispered.

“Back then, maybe—the idea of them, in the past, maybe. But now? Seriously?”

Maura sucked in her cheeks, calming herself, and pursed her lips tightly in restraint. “They are alive in our recent history. In 1999, Clare County Council stopped work on a bypass, a motorway that was already in production and costing the state hundreds of thousands of pounds, because the road would go right through a fairy bush that would have to be cut down. The locals petitioned against it. Everyone knew that the fairy would cause accidents on that road.”

I sighed.

“In the 1950s, Walt Disney came to Ireland covertly, before he made
Darby O’Gill and the Little People
. He traveled the length and breadth of the country looking for a leprechaun to take home with him.”