Reluctantly Charmed (34 page)

I leaned in.

“Kate McDaid had been taken, you see, as a child. The hair, you see, they had their eye on her. She was a beautiful child and she could sing, and the fairies, they love music. What they wouldn’t do for a tune.”

There was nodding and short grunts of agreement.

“So they took her, as was their wont. They were so enraptured by her voice and her pure spirit—they say she had a pure soul as a child—that they took her for seven years. Anyway, as is their way, they never send a mortal back to the mortal world without a gift from theirs. You can say what you want about the good people, but they’re fair, they’re always fair.”

There was more nodding and louder grunts of approval.

Annie expertly balanced a tray of pints as she made her way across to the table. Setting it down, she silently distributed a drink into each open hand.

“So, on hearing the people’s cries for help, they gave her a gift—the gift to heal the sick, man or beast. And because of the famine and the people being in dire need of help, they gave her an extra gift—the gift of spell making. She could cast spells on anyone and anything. They wanted her to give the famine people hope. But they warned her, oooh, they warned her.” His voice rose to a song. “She could not take money for her gift. They cannot abide greediness. Cannot abide it.”

I was enjoying the drama, the singsong quality of the tale. The fire was crackling easily in the corner, the pints were slipping down smoothly, and we, Dermot’s engrossed audience, sat with fixed stares, nodding in time to the beat of the story.

“So when the people, the starving, poor people in the last days of the famine, asked the fairies for help, they handed Kate McDaid back. She was about seventeen at the time. Gave her back to the people with her gift for healing and spell making, to do good by the people of Knocknamee. But she got a taste for it, for the money. And the darkness and the blackness crept into her. And she was worse than any Englishman had ever been to this village. Until she got paid, she put spells on the cattle so there was no milk, made the children sick, dried up the land until it was almost bare rock. And when she was paid, the sun would shine, the grass would grow, and buckets of milk would overflow into the mouths of infants. She did dealings with the devil, there’s no doubt about it.”

“Tell her what happened then,” Annie piped up from behind the bar, where she was busy pouring the next round.

“Well, they say the fairies got angry with her. Stopped her spells from working and her potions from curing. Left her a madwoman, up in her big house, trying to get back into their favor, and the favor of the villagers. But neither side would have her.” Dermot sat back and drained the end of his pint in one swift gulp. He raised his empty glass and nodded in the direction of Annie, calling for a refill.

“So how did it end?”

“We don’t rightly know. She hadn’t been seen for a long time. And then there was a fire in the old house. But you wouldn’t know. History tends to overlap and the dates get all in a muddle.”

“What a story!” I said, shivering at the memory of the old ruin.

“It’s not a story, girl. Different times, different creatures.” He winked at me.

I nodded solemnly with understanding.

“How did she know spells and potions?” I asked cautiously, aware of how my personal knowledge of spells and concoctions was springing up out of nowhere. “Did she have a book or did she just know things in her head?”

“Well, no one knows for certain. Biddy Early—have you heard of her?”

The good witch from Clare, with the crystal-ball Bottle. “Mmmm.” I shrugged my shoulders at Dermot.

“She was over in Feakle, about ten miles from here, was alive the same time as the Red Hag. She had the gift, too, given to her by the fairies. But they were so different. She did nothing but good with her gift—cured the sick and never took a penny for it. But she used a Bottle, a dark-blue Bottle, like a crystal ball, I suppose. She could see into the future with it. They say she’d look into it and she’d know everything about you instantly. But the Red Hag didn’t have a Bottle, she didn’t have foresight. I don’t know how she knew her spells.”

Maybe the Red Hag just knew things, like I just knew things. “And the Bottle. Now it’s . . .”

“No one knows. Some say it ended up in the bottom of a lake, thrown there by a Catholic priest. Some say the fairies came and took it back. Maybe the Red Hag got her hands on it. Others say it’s buried with Biddy Early. No one knows for sure.” He supped on his pint. “They would have known each other, the two witches. Some say they were taken at the same time, went to the same fairy palace, and then rose out and took different paths.”

I nodded, thinking that a fairy palace sounded like an English
boarding school for young ladies. “Thanks, Dermot. Thanks for telling me this.”

He smiled at me. “I suppose everyone should know about their relatives, good or bad.”

I had one last question for him. “So the Steps? Did you ever hear of them before?”

“No.” He shook his head seriously. “I’ve never heard anything like that before.”

If I’m honest, I felt a bit disappointed. I was hoping he’d have another story for me about Steps and fairies and high kings of Ireland, and between us we could tease out the truth. The thing was, six weeks earlier, when I’d sat in the solicitor’s office and heard for the first time about the other Kate McDaid, I’d been 100 percent convinced that she was a mad old woman, that she’d been hearing voices in her head. Now I was beginning to wonder. This woman had a story, a real story. She was a legend.

For a few moments we all looked into the tops of our Guinness, lost in thought.

And once again, seizing the silence, Dermot Flynn piped up. He was drunk now, so the song kicked off loud and mid-chorus. It was a much livelier tune than earlier. I couldn’t stop my foot tapping and my head bobbing. Annie started to do a small jig at the corner of the bar, grinning from ear to ear and daintily crossing her feet in front of each other. She looked as light as a feather, in spite of her heavy build.

“The fairies want us to have a good time? Sure, that’s what we’ll do. Isn’t that what we’ve always done in Knocknamee? Isn’t that why they made their home here? Git the fiddle out there, Dinny, would ya?” Dermot shouted across to a young man, who immediately stuck his head in a bag and produced a well-polished fiddle that he snuck under his chin. And then the fun
really started. We rose from our seats and hopped and leaped around the room, looping arms for a spin with wild abandon. We bumped and swung from each other. Dizzy and rosy.

It must have been hours later, when my hair was damp from sweat, my cheeks ached from smiling, and I felt like I’d danced my toes off, that there was a loud rapping on the door. Everyone turned anxiously to Annie, who nervously looked at her watch. It was three in the morning. Her extra hour had turned into four.

She jabbed her finger at the room. “If it’s the guards, I’ll hang yis all.”

The rapping got louder and more intense.

“I’m coming, for crying out loud. Is it a fire or what?” She jangled her keys and threw us another threatening look before cautiously opening the door just wide enough for her nose to poke out.

There were mumbles.

She closed the door again and looked over at me. “It’s for you. Some fellas in anoraks.”

It was starting.

29

O
vernight, the stillness of Knocknamee had become a swirling rainbow of color. Tents had been pitched on every postage stamp of green space—tents as blue as the sea and as orange as the fiery sun, some with flags of stars, circles, and stripes. The sea of tents stretched for miles, to the outskirts of Feakle, to the shores of An Trá Bhán and halfway up Devil’s Bit, like Skittles scattered on a mountaintop. Cars were knitted like Lego pieces, exhaling petrol fumes, sandwiched cheek to cheek with no room to inhale. Elbows jutted out of stopped-car windows, demanding attention. Anoraks of many colors, zips, and buttons paraded the main street, and strange accents and languages punctured the air. Pink, freckled, yellowed, black hands hung on to pages of maps, lessons, and clues. Everyone was joining up the dots and filling in the blanks.

Drake Chandler’s fans arrived in their droves, all greasy hair, tight jeans, and cardigans with holes at the wrists. Their eyeliner was so liberally applied they looked like snowmen with lumps of coal for eyes. United in grief, their search for fairies was not out of curiosity. Instead, they were looking for confirmation that their hero, their leader, their inspiration, had not died in vain, that there was a reason for his passing, and that his death ultimately had meaning.

The media came, too, of course, by the angry truckload. Shiny vans with large logos pasted onto the side, tripping over cables and wires and large lenses that whirred like small dinosaurs. Reporters with plastic hair and hollow cheeks smoothed down their pastel suits and cleaned their oversized teeth with their tongues. They, too, were joining up the dots and filling in the blanks. They’d be staying until the seventh Step was published, hoping beyond hope that some fairies might appear.

The village was heaving, coughing, and spluttering. Every plug was sparked up with extension wires that hung out windows from first-floor bedrooms and led into TV vans. Queues snaked endlessly to use one of the two computers in the Internet café.

Annie had run out of pint glasses within hours and had to get Vinny to drive to Ennis to buy more. The foreigners drank slowly, she noticed, so there was never enough time to wash and reuse their glasses. Martin’s shop had sold out in the first half a day, and he’d had to do the same, sending Vinny and his van to Ennis to restock. Then he raised his prices.

Dermot had sketched out a map of the town, highlighting local points of interest, and printed it up with the help of a photocopier. He was charging two euros a sheet and had cleared a cool thousand euros by the end of the day.

With the smell of money everywhere, even hooded Dylan had stubbed out his cigarettes and left his cans of Dutch Gold to lead small groups around the ruin. His tour included details of what the Red Hag ate for lunch, and the original site of her direct phone line to the devil.

Nessa had agreed to let Dylan be her boyfriend again. Dressed as the Red Hag, in a black shawl and a red headscarf, she was jumping out at people.

“Make hay while the sun shines.” Johnny Logan was popping his head into every business on the main street to repeat his mantra while he rubbed his hands together. “We’ll make a mint yet,” he’d say with a wink out the door.

Johnny had his own ideas. He was building a stage at the entrance to the village. It was nothing too fancy—more of an elevated platform made out of wood. He told me he saw it as the focal point of the village. He was planning to make speeches from it, dressed in his mayoral garments, including his big town-mayor chain. “With all these cameras about, I should get a haircut,” he said.

I’d decided to stay on in Knocknamee, and not try to outrun the carnival on my doorstep. First, I was certain the fiesta would follow me wherever I went. And secondly, I knew—call it coincidence, the fairies, cosmic alignment, heebie-jeebies, whatever you like—that Knocknamee was where I was supposed to be for the final Step. I had only days until the final reveal, and I was counting down just as much as the Anoraks.

Unbelievably, amid all the hurly-burly, I was managing to keep a low profile. And while the media knew I was in Knocknamee, they didn’t know where. The locals, the lovely, lovely locals, remained tight-lipped. And so far no bribes, no offers, no pushy reporters, and no threatening words had managed to extract any information that revealed my whereabouts, and neither had Maura—in fact, I hadn’t seen Maura in a while. But I knew my time was limited. I knew there’d be a slip, deliberate or accidental, and soon fingers would be pointing and I would be a witch once more: black hat, broomstick, and toothless.

I was spending a lot of time in the B and B and was starting to feel a bit claustrophobic, probably because I was excited about the girls coming soon, too. So I jumped at the chance to
do something normal, something that involved getting out for a bit. Well, that and because the text that came through was from Hugh.

Hey sorry i didn’t get a chance to say bye at dinner. You left early, hope it wasn’t my cooking. Was wondering if I could ask you a favor? I’m struggling with work in from the agency and need a second opinion. Dinner in return? Hugh

I agreed because, first, I wanted to get out; secondly, Hugh clearly had no idea what was happening in Knocknamee and who I was supposed to be; thirdly, I liked working in advertising and working was a nice normal thing to do, something that didn’t involve fairies or witches or mystical steps; and, finally, I’d get to see Hugh one more time.

I knew I was going to see him in a platonic way—he wasn’t asking me on a date. While the old me might have read into that text that it was potentially a date, the new hard, fast, steely, and never-to-have-her-heart-broken Kate knew that this was a working meeting. Not a date. Anyway, he had a girlfriend and he was not interested.

I was so confident it wasn’t a date, I didn’t even put any makeup on. Barefaced, in a pair of jeans and my slightly itchy woolly jumper, I put on Colm’s helmet, confident it would disguise me, and cycled over to the Olde Punchbowl, a pub about five miles from Knocknamee where Hugh and I had agreed to meet. He’d suggested Knocknamee at first, but I’d quickly put a stop to that, telling him I’d like to see some more of the countryside.

Inside the Olde Punchbowl, Hugh was hunched over beside a log fire, cradling a pint of Guinness, his brow furrowed. Somehow he looked anxious. He saw me enter, shot up, and
lurched toward me to kiss my cheek. Then he began to rearrange the furniture, mumbling about not knowing where I’d like to sit and would I prefer the window.

I sat down opposite the fire, stretched out my hands to warm them, and smiled comfortably at him. “This is perfect.”

“A drink?” He clapped his hands together. “What’s it to be, then?”