Reluctantly Charmed (3 page)

“Letters?”

“Well, one letter and Seven Steps. She explains it all here. May I?” He coughed quietly, and started to read the pages splayed out in front of him.

As a girl, the fairies came to me; they whispered in my dreams and left songs in my head. I went to the glen and found them there. We danced and played. They took me into the fairy realm and showed me their life of joy. A life with no possessions and no want. They lived in harmony with the earth. Never again would I know such happiness.

But before the bloom was on me to enter womanhood, a sadness overcame the good people, and they told me of a terrible fate that stood in front of us all. Mortals had stopped listening to them, had forgotten their existence. Only the children, who never had the ears of the adults, could hear the fairy folk. The adults had filled their lives with noise and loud voices. They stopped listening to the breath of the wind, the pulse of the soil, the roar of the ocean. They built on fairy paths, tore through whitethorn bushes, forgot to speak to the trees or ask for a fairy’s blessing. People had forgotten their need for the fairies, that we share the earth, that we must work together to keep her happy. If we don’t, we all suffer.

The fairies gave me the gifts of healing and spell making. When I had the ways of a woman, they became invisible to me. Adulthood is filled with obligations and distractions. My purity was left in childhood. I have made many mistakes that have cost me dearly, and I have angered them.

The good people visited me for a final time in my dotage. They have given me a chance of redemption. They have asked for my help. They are ready to show themselves to the world again. The fairies must be seen and must be heard once more for the sake of humankind. They whispered to me Seven Steps that must be taken by many Celtic souls in preparation for their revelation. They have given me the great honor of passing these Steps on to the world, but because of my mistakes I have failed them. All doors are shut to me now.

I have seen you coming, young Kate. You are the real witch. You will finish what I have started. You have been fairy-struck. You know the fairy ways, the healing power of the earth, the spells of the otherworld.

Publish one Step every seven days. Each Step must be performed in order. Beware the wrath of the good people; they are fair but can show great evil when wronged. They are waiting.
Go n-éirí an bóthar leat.

“And then she signs it ‘Kate McDaid, The Red Hag, 1878.’” Seamus MacMurphy fixed his stare on the page before him.

The room froze. My parents, statue-like, remained silent. I felt like a cement mixer had spilled its load into my head. My ears filled with a white noise. I’d never heard anything so utterly crazy in my whole life. Fairies?
I
had been fairy-struck?
I
was the
real
witch?

“I don’t get it.” My voice broke the heavy silence.

“It is a little unusual.” The understatement of the year fell out of Seamus MacMurphy’s mouth.

Red Hag, fairy-struck, good people. I looked over at my parents, confused.

“I’m dumbfounded,” my always-vocal dad said, his tongue clicking in his mouth.

Mam threw Dad a disapproving look. “I always knew your side of the family were mad.”

“God love her, she was away with them, wasn’t she?” Dad said, with all the moroseness of a eulogy.

I eyed him in disbelief. How could he have adopted such a serious tone? I felt a spasm in my stomach and a nervous tremor itch through me. I was going to laugh. I bit my lip to stop myself. I held my breath and felt my cheeks fill up with air. My chest jumped. It wasn’t appropriate. I knew it wasn’t appropriate. I shut my eyes to stop them from watering. My head rolled into my chest and my hands raced to my mouth as I released a low giggle and a gush of air.
Stop it, stop it, stop it!
I thought.

“Ah, Kate,” Dad said, but I could hear the laughter in his voice. I looked up, and a crooked smile crept over his face. His eyes were giddy. I didn’t need the encouragement.

“She was nuts,” I said, slapping my thigh. “Nuts. Dad, you had a nutter in your family.”

“It’s your family, too.” His eyes were filling up.

“Loop the loop.” Mam tapped her temple, breathing through her nose.

Seamus MacMurphy was flushed and cleared his throat repeatedly in an effort to settle us.

“Sorry, sorry!” Dad shouted too loudly, half laughing. “It’s a bit of a shock.”

“What a load of nonsense,” Mam added. “But, tell me this.” She leaned forward and put her hand on her chin, serious now. “What’s the estate?”

Biting on his bottom lip, Seamus MacMurphy puffed out his cheeks. His head quivered from side to side. “I can’t tell you, I’m
afraid,” he said somewhat uncomfortably. “One of the stipulations of the will is that the estate is only revealed when the Seven Steps and the letter have been published.”

Crazy
, I thought.
This is crazy. But funny, crazy
.

“What do you mean published?” I said aloud.

“Published.”

“Like in a newspaper?”

“It doesn’t stipulate the medium. It just says ‘published,’ so newspaper, book, magazine, Internet. Published in a mass medium and on the same day every week from the day you start.”

“She doesn’t ask for much,” Dad snuffled out of the corner of his mouth.

“Okay, so what do these things say?” I asked.

“Well, you have to agree to do this before I can show you.”

“Okay . . .” I looked over at Mam and Dad. “Yeah, I’ll do it. I want to know what they say. Come on, you must be curious?”

“What if you’re getting into something you can’t control?” Mam was always practical.

“Hardly,” I laughed, thinking how I had no control over anything in my life, anyway—a career in freefall, a nonexistent love life, warring parents—so what harm would it be to add one more thing to that growing list? And with that one throwaway comment, I pushed Play, and the wheels started to turn.

“If you agree to one, you agree to them all. And you have to publish that first letter, the one addressed to you, from the other Kate McDaid.” I nodded at the lawyer, and he slid an inky scrawled envelope across his desk. There was a wax seal on it. It felt very
Dangerous Liaisons
. “This is the first. It must be published word for word.”

Smiling, I picked it up with the kind of excited feeling you get before you go on the dodgems at a carnival. Giddy.

I broke the seal and pulled out the single page that was inside
the envelope. I tried to focus in on the handwriting. It was shaky and old.

“Well, read it out, for crying out loud.”

Step One

In the glowing green fields and shadowy glen,

Our laughs can be heard ’mongst women and men,

The whistle of gale carries our joyous song,

In the rustle of trees, we’ve been here all along.

’Tis in the hardness of rocks and corners we dwell,

We’re whispered in songs and stories you tell,

Floating o’er you, we sing and we dance in the rain,

But through the darkness of shadows soar black wails of pain.

One of yours we’ve kept in the depths of our lair,

We took her long ago, the girl of red hair,

With our gifts, she returns with promise of light,

To guide the way out of your sickness of night.

Acknowledge the spirit that in nature lives,

Whistle to flowers, embrace how the fairy world gives,

If you still do not see us, our anger you’ll know,

A cradle burned, a soul extinguished,

In the music it shall show.

I cleared my throat and looked around the room. “It doesn’t sound too bad. I mean, it’s a bit airy-fairy, heebie-jeebie, but it’s not going to do any harm, is it?”

“I’ve heard of talking to plants, but whistling to leaves
sounds like a load of old nonsense to me,” Dad muttered into his chest.

Quietly I reread the first Step. “I think it’s grand,” I announced. “It’s a bit self-helpy—‘acknowledge the spirit in nature.’” I could feel my inner hippy about to explode out of me.

“‘If you still do not see us, our anger you’ll know.’” Mam slowly shook her head and furrowed her brow. “Fire and brimstone—I think she got a few of her ideas from the Catholic Church.” Her face fell into a creased look of uninterest. She shrugged her shoulders. “Not to worry, pet.” She leaned across and rubbed my knee. “There might be a bit of money at the end of it, you never know.”

I nodded. I guessed it would be great if there was money at the end of it, a surprise winning lottery ticket. But at that moment, I wasn’t thinking about the mysterious estate. I was thinking that it was kind of nice to get a long-lost letter from an ancestor. Even if she was mad as a brush.

3

W
hen I got to work I made arrangements with Seamus MacMurphy to deliver the six other Steps. He promised to post or deliver one each week for the next six weeks. I had to publish each one the day I received it.

Then I hit Google. I found lots of websites for fairies with magic wands and recipes for potions and spells. I searched Irish fairies and found pictures of leprechauns sitting on pots of gold at the foot of a rainbow. Kids’ stuff. I googled Irish witches, confident my picture wasn’t going to appear.

For the record, I knew I wasn’t a witch—not a white witch, a black witch, a red witch, whatever. I’d never walked into a room and had an icy chill race through me and just known that I’d been there before. I didn’t see dead people, nor did I want to. I didn’t know any spells, although I’m sure if I did, they’d have come in handy. I needed caller ID to know who was on the phone. I’d never so much as meditated. I worked, rode my bike, watched too much TV, listened to music, and went to the pub.

I didn’t believe in magic, in witchcraft, or in prophecies from another time. I believed I had an Aunt Kate who was a bit batty and lived in a time when every village had a witch and people talked to fairies. I couldn’t even imagine what that must have
been like. Confusing, at best—you’d never know who you were going to step on.

But I did like the
idea
of fairies, and guardian angels and cosmic coincidences. It was just really hard to believe in any of it when you couldn’t see it. I’d read self-help and spiritual guidebooks—I was a normal twenty-six-year-old, after all. I was interested in understanding how things worked and how I worked. I looked to the universe for coincidences. I tried to understand why a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan meant free hamburgers for everyone in New York. I’d read
Buddhism for Dummies
(well, the bullet points). I’d been grateful for at least two days, thanked the floor for letting me step on it, the tea for letting me drink it, the door for letting me open it. It was exhausting, and at the end of it there was no check for five million euros (which, when you think about it, is a moderate sum when you potentially could request an infinite amount—an everlasting gobstopper amount). I’d tried to attract the man of my dreams by clearing space for him in my wardrobe and sleeping on one side of the bed, and had been a little bit shocked when he never materialized out of my wardrobe with a bucket of strawberry ice cream and a fistful of rom-com DVDs.

I knew a bit about fairies—every Irish person does. When Ireland was a rural community, about eighty years ago, most people believed in fairies, in spite of the fact that almost nine out of ten Irish people were Catholic. In fact, it’s probably because Irish people are brought up with the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, apparitions, and moving statues that it’s not such a huge leap for us to give fairies the benefit of the doubt.

The majority of us
still
attend Catholic schools. This isn’t necessarily a conscious decision by parents to rear their children with a Bible in hand. It’s more dictated by convenience: Catholic schools are free and there’s at least one in every neighborhood.
But it has guaranteed that every generation has grown up with a degree of Catholicism beaten into them. It’s safe to say that we’re “pick and mix” Catholics, though. We believe that the church at its core has a good moral message of love and compassion, but we can’t be bothered with the strict rules it imposes, like abstaining from alcohol on Good Friday (which has become the biggest day of the year for house parties, because the pubs are shut).

We hang on to some of the Catholic traditions, though, and most of us will say a prayer when it’s necessary: for sickness, lottery tickets, or new babies. And I know I’m not alone in making a discreet sign of the cross every time I pass a church—it’s like giving God a little wink, wink, letting him know I’m still here and hedging my bets in case he’s still there. And so, while most of the fairy stuff has died out, there’s still a lingering interest, because the supernatural is so much a part of our culture.

I knew about fairies from my granny. When I was small, Granny would regularly take me out to the garden to hunt down the fairies. She’d peer into the thickest, most overgrown part of the garden, the spot where they would have plenty of hiding places. “They love young people,” she’d say, pushing me forward, and I’d look hard, searching for a stripy sock or red jacket with gold buttons, straining my eyes until I was almost blind. But I never saw anything.