PART ONE I was sitting at the pub with a pint of stout, a traveler’s backpack nestled neatly under the barstool, reading a Yeats collection of poems about faeries. I was acting the part of a tourist, in between consulting gigs and taking the time to backpack around Europe. Despite my American appearance, I knew Dublin city like a native, and felt quite at home, as I settled through the afternoon into this cozy snug.
I’ve lingered here too long, as my quiet afternoon wanes into the raucous Saturday night crowds. My earbuds can’t drown out the wailing of the messy hen party in the corner, as the spray-tanned British girls danced in a circle, shrieking and smashing gin & tonic goblets. From their hard-bitten country accents, they were likely from outside Yorkshire. No, maybe Newcastle. Yes, definitely that. I’ve been mixing with the Irish too long indeed if I could mistake the colorful Geordie-speak of northern England. They were clearly here on the ‘lash,’ so it was called, with their club-ready caked on makeup and wearing all manner of phallic bachelorette accessories.
I began to pack up and settle my tab, when my eyes got a little stuck. Captivated at first by the ridiculous drunkenness of the girls, but mystified more by the one bohemian girl that stood out, dancing around them. As they belted out the lyrics from the Spice Girls,, arm and arm spinning each other like a carousel, this one girl danced outside their circle, crowned with flowers around her cropped, strawberry blonde hair. She wore a tattered white slip against her ballerina-shaped silhouette. A large golden medallion hung low, framing her porcelain neckline and stoic features. There was something sad and almost terrifying about her detached playfulness, as she twirled about on, what I swear looked like, bare mud-crusted feet. And despite all this, she was quite plainly the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
Regardless of her vagabond appearance, she carried a gentle grace as dancing and twirling outside the group. She would pirouette and bow in a way that seemed to taunt and mock the other girl’s sloppy clamoring. She stayed strangely apart, tapping each one of them by the shoulder, a game of duck-duck-goose, then spinning herself around like a top after each pass with one finger to the top of her own head. I found myself leering fascinated, as I noticed she always seemed to skip the same person in her shoulder tap. I was completely hypnotized as I leaned out of my stool, swept up in the disbelief of her graceful dance.
It was at that moment when she abruptly planted her feet, gazed briefly at the floor before shooting her two green arrow eyes directly across the room to find me. She caught me staring and fired back in a way that give me a terrible shudder. I broke my stare but our eyes continued to peek and retreat, then dart around the room before sheepishly finding each other again. Each time, a little more inviting. The paused exchange was interrupted by the hoots and hollers from the girls. They were all finishing their round and pulling at each other’s arms to head out to their next stop along the evening’s city pub crawl.
The soft beauty whispered in each of their ears, as they scrambled abruptly to leave. So hurriedly in fact, they sent purses swinging about, spilling contents, and sailing at least three glasses to shatter on the floor. My trailing beauty walked over the glass in naked feet, unphased and unconcerned. She bent over to help collect one girl’s scattered belongings, and seemed to catch her necklace on the corner of the table when she stood up. In her haste to leave with the group, she broke the chain on that necklace and sent it’s hanging gold medallion spinning on the floor behind her, before scurrying past me.
The retreating Brits were being shouted at by the barkeep and the bar patrons as they made their exit. Seeing an opportunity, I leaped to scoop up the lost medallion and chased after my white-dressed enchantress to return it. Just as I was about to grab her arm, she spun around quickly and confronted me with a halted palm.
“How can you see me? It’s not possible.” I didn’t understand her question, so I held up her lost pendent but she retracted, “I cannot touch that, it was never mine in the first place. Please, you would be doing me a kindness to keep it.” Suddenly I was quite aware of a ‘nothingness’ around me. The music had seemed to stop, the room seemed a bit grayer, and the patrons were all frozen silent. I tried again to speak before she cut me off.
“Please, I am warning you, stand back.” She rubbed the temples of her forehead in distress. “It’s my fault, I should not have let you see me. I should’ve never stared back. It’s just, you just look so much like him. It’s not possible.” Trailing off, she shook her thoughts away. I was so completely lost and confused, but feigned coolness, feeling content to stay in this moment forever, ensnared by her compassionate yet sullen voice.
Seeing my confusion, she tried again, “To know me is to carry a curse, my fair lad. The coin is now yours, I cannot take it back, the dinner bell cannot be unrung. I fear tragedy will now be stalking your loved ones, and death will follow.” I wanted so much to laugh, wondering how much she had had to drink, but I just nodded away like a hopeless fool on a first date.
She looked back at me now with endearment, “Perhaps we can make a deal. It is forbidden, but it is in my power to help you. You keep that gold coin from me, and in exchange I will try my best to keep Death off the scent of your family.”
I assumed she meant the medallion, as I felt its heaviness, and glanced down to see it’s runic markings, noticing a pronounced pirate skull for the first time. Then my eyes snapped back up to clarify what she had said. Throat rattling a little, I asked her what she means by the death of my family?
“Listen closely now. Your aunt on your father’s side will die in two days time. Don’t ask me any more. Write down two names of your enemies, write it in black ink and place it folded in half under a glass you have sipped from. From there, my sweet love, I will do my best to bargain for her life on your behalf.”
I was horrified by the hollow cold words in her morbid offer, and from such a sweet innocent face. Amidst my gasp, she turned back to the door and her company. I shook off my disbelief and attempted to grab her arm, pleading for her to explain. My arm stretched out for her, as she pressed out the door. I could see out the window the hen party, turning west along the river to town, sidewalks illuminated by lights along Samuel Beckett bridge. As I dove outside and turned in pursuit, something happened that I still cannot trust or expect anyone else to believe.
The streets had changed. The cars were gone, the bridge was gone. The paved motorway was replaced with cobblestone. There was a cold fog in the air. Horse drawn carriages were clacking about. Pedestrians were walking gingerly, couples draped in Edwarian fashion. Men with felt top hats and canes, women with plumed caps and draped in fur. I recognized the bustling livestock markets along the quays from something I had seen in faded photographs. And large steam fishing boats and transport ferries docked along the fresh stone banks. I looked around frantically for my young lady, medallion held high, but could not spot her. Curiously, where I had expected the ‘hen-do’ to be, there was a mangy looking fox, trotting invisibly around busy feet. It turned briefly back at me, as if I had called it, before going back to sniffing around the fishmongers.
I rubbed my eyes and looked over my shoulder back to the bar where I had just left. Nothing inside had changed, everyone there as I left them. Including that enchantress, impossibly back inside, a magician’s reveal, staring back at me. I turned and pushed back inside, hesitating only briefly enough to twist my face at what drunken streetside delusion was still lingering over my shoulder. As I approached, the lady seemed to be evading me down winding cellar stairs. With hands trembling, I clutched her arm and stammered for the countless questions stalled at my lips.
The bar went black from a storm, and there now seemed to be a thick gray fog all around me. My once gentle softly painted beauty, now looked polarized in a terrifying blacklight. Her feet lifted off the floor, as she levitated above me and shrieked with an ungodly high-pitched scream. Her lungs screeched so loudly, I closed my eyes tight in fear that all the glass windows would explode. Her shrills shook the walls, killed the electricity and dropped me to my knees. And then, it was over. The lights were back on, the patrons continued to bustle about, I was left alone on the floor and she was gone.
The power glowed back to life, and the pub denizens seemed unphased. No one seemed to notice anything but the temporary power surge, resuming their banter. Some of them looked uncomfortably at me, the weird man on his knees in a bar. I was shivering a bit in disbelief before I glanced about for any sign of acknowledgement from the surrounding patrons on what devilry had just occurred. Everyone avoided eye contact, dismissing me as a drunk, except the barkeep who hovered glaringly above. An old gruff bald man with navy tattoos all along his bulldog arms, propping him up across the bar as he shook his head.
He walked around to help me to my stool, promptly pouring three shots of Irish whiskey between us, taking one for himself. “This will help.” he muttered with coarse condolence. “Did you see… the…”, I shuddered while clutching at my second shot glass. He cut me off quickly in a full-throated northside accent, “I saw nottin’, I know nottin’. Best notta be asking questions when faery magic is about.”
He began to pour me another shot, but I had to decline. “I really. must be. getting back to my hostel,” working to string a sentence together. Upon rising, my knees buckled a bit, wary of what was waiting outside the pub’s red door, and so I sat back down. “On second thought, do you have a room at the inn upstairs?”
The pug-faced man nodded, “Aye, should have, but we only let by the week. And we’ll need a cash deposit,” as he looked me up and down warily. I rifled immediately through my pockets to see what I had.
“I am not sure I have enough cash on me,” as I uncrumpled some bills and sorted coins on the bartop. But the man quieted my nerves with a steady hand, as he put his finger down onto the one large medallion that stood out prominently amongst the pile. “Forget it, I’ll just take tis ‘ere coin off yer hands, and we’ll call it square. Best I hold onto that anyways,” he added before taking the chewing gum out of his mouth and using it to press the coin up on the back wall, nestled between a cluster of hanging polaroids, old cash bills, and other vintage trinkets.
I finished my last shot of whiskey and hoisted my backpack onto my shoulder, heading upstairs to my chambers. With my hand on the skinny white hallway door, I turned back to the barkeep for one last muttered attempt. “What just happened here”, the most sincere of so many other questions fluttering about in my head.
Oddly anticipating them all, he shut me up with one simple reply. “Bad enough to try to grab one, but lad, you never, ever bargain with a banshee.”
ORDER ‘STRANGELY FIERCE FABLES’ for the full story:
Paul Carreo 